The Night Church Part 28

Yes, to protect us.

They reached the walkway that led up to the house- Even with the money they would get here they were hardly in for an easy time.

She put her arm around Jonathan's waist and drew him past the house, hushing his impulse to go through the front door with a quiet whisper. Precautions and strategies did not occur to Jonathan. If this was to be done right she had to do it. Her ability came from dormitory sneaks, creeping out on midnight dares.

The important thing was to a.s.sume the worst. That way you wouldn't be surprised.

They slipped from bush to bush until she had a view overlooking both the Banion house and the sidewalk before it. She tugged at Jonathan's hand, gestured, and crouched down. He came down beside her. They were behind a shrub, perhaps an ailanthus bush, well concealed.

She risked a breathy whisper. "We'll give it five minutes, then go in through the garage."

"Give what five minutes?"

"Our tail, dope. If anybody's following us we'll see them come up the sidewalk."

"You're beautiful."

Mr. Romantic. He didn't even now understand the danger they were in, not really.

Her dream thing's eyes were yellow and huge and steady.

"What's come over you? Are you all right?"

"Sh! Whisper."

"Sorry."

She pinched his wrist. "I'm praying that we'll get out of this alive." Lord, let him finally grasp the seriousness of our problem.

He patted her on the cheek, an absurd gesture of rea.s.sur-ance. For all his strength and intelligence, Jonathan could be maddeningly guileless.

The five minutes pa.s.sed without a sign of trouble. Patricia allowed herself some small hope. She was going to get them out of this. One day soon, she would have a little room somewhere and a decent little job and the exotic luxury of this man as her husband.

Or was that more than this particular ordinary garden-variety mutant had a right to ask?

She drew him close to her; she could smell his golden body in the dark. He smelled so sweet, so unlike the stench of a normal human being on a hot night. She felt her own body singing with desire. His hand came under her chin and turned her face to his. There was nothing wrong in that; kisses were silent. . The mutants find one another attractive. Of course.

So many lonely years were being erased by his kisses, a whole girlhood of desolate tea-dances with the Saint Dominic boys. But we orphans did not want other orphans, we wanted princes. How we dreamed, we wizard-frogged princesses.

Somewhere a dog howled. Both of their heads turned toward the distant noise. But it was far away, blocks and blocks. A bird muttered a reply. The air moved a little, and a few leaves whispered.

She gave his shoulder two quick taps and nodded her head. They rose up from behind their bush and trotted into the Banion side yard. Although Patricia did not know the place as well as he, she did not let Jonathan lead even here. She took out her pistol, flicked off the rather stiff safety catch. For some reason its presence in her hand was a little embarra.s.sing; she held it down where Jonathan could not see. It implied a kind of commitment to what they were doing that she was not entirely sure she wanted him to perceive. It might scare him.

She hefted the gun a little, preparing to enter the house.

They reached the back door that led into the garage. Jonathan took out his keys and opened it. There was a deafening squeak, then they were in, brushing spider webs from their faces. The garage was black; too bad they didn't have a small flashlight.

Jonathan's hand come into hers. "I'm scared, hon, to be frank."

"We'll be all right. Just keep on."

"If we get caught-"

"We'll back each other up. Better to be caught here by Mike and your mother if we're going to be caught at all."

A hard squeeze of the hand communicated heartfelt as-sent. A few steps into the garage Patricia realized Mike's car was gone. All to the good. One less person to wake up.

They went through the shadowy kitchen, past the hanging plants and the gleaming appliances Patricia had once so admired, through the dining room with its wonderful antique table and chairs, and into Mike's den.

Here were loungers and a dartboard on the wall and a case of books about police work. Here also a big television for the weekend games and a desk for the weeknight work. The room spoke Mike Banion and made Patricia feel sad for the friendship that had to die. Without her and Jonathan Mike was going to be a very lonely man.

"I think we might find something in the desk." Jonathan lifted up the blotter. He withdrew the key from a little leather slit on its underside. Clever hiding place, and fortu-nate that Jonathan knew about it.

There was a money clip of twenties in the top drawer. Six of them. Jonathan pocketed it.

"Hot money," he whispered. He tried to smile but it was obvious he felt as unpleasant about this as she did. She took a deep, calming breath, and calculated. They now had a hundred and fifty-six dollars. It wasn't enough. They had to go upstairs.

As Jonathan knew the house so much better than she, there was no choice at this point but to let him lead the way. She had no faith in his innocent skills as a burglar. She stopped him at the foot of the stairs. "If she wakes up, do you know what to do?"

"Run like h.e.l.l."

"No! That's how you get caught. You stand absolutely still and don't make a sound. She'll go back to sleep."

"Oh, I see." Although the house was centrally air condi-tioned, the air upstairs smelled thickly of the perfumes of sleep. Patricia first sent Jonathan into his own room to get the eleven dollars and six subway tokens on his dresser. When he came back they went together to Mike and Mary's bedroom.

Mary lay on the near side of the bed, turned toward them. Her face was almost invisible. Patricia looked long at her from the shadows of the hall. For a breathless few moments if seemed that her eyes might be open.

I will kill her if I must, she told herself. I will not hesitate. But that was a lie: this woman was Jonathan's mother. His shoulder touched Patricia's. All Patricia could do was hope that Mary didn't wake up and force the issue.

Now that they were this close to the end Patricia could leave Jonathan here in the hall for the rest of the job. The other girls had always chosen her to sneak into Sister Saint John's room when that was called for, replacing her wimple with the gardener's fedora or stealing the lenses out of her gla.s.ses or some such mischief.

Mary Banion was not the good-hearted soul Sister had been, and this was not funny. Carefully, moving so that she rustled as little as possible, Patricia went past the bed. Mary's breathing was not regular. Bad, bad sign. Just as she was deciding to retreat, Mary's purse swam into view on the dresser. In it would be the wallet. How much? A couple of hundred if they got lucky. California, Florida, Texas, Mon-tana. Freedom in a purse.

When Patricia reached in, something made a distinct clinking sound. She froze.

No movement from the bed.

She withdrew the wallet. Before she dared leave the room she stood a long time watching and listening.

Mary was very still. Patricia began to move toward the door.

When she was beside the bed she looked down at Mary once again.

And met very definitely open eyes.

There came from Mary a long hissing sound like cloth tearing. She rose up in bed. Patricia stood dumbfounded, confused by the suddenness of Mary's movements.

"Stop. Both of you!" Mary leaped from the bed.

Patricia got to the door just before Mary would have blocked it with her body. "You can't run away. It's impossible!"

"Leave us alone, Mary. Don't you dare try to stop us."

The sound that came in response was almost inhuman in its rage.

"I have a gun, Mary!"

"You can't escape you little fools, you belong belong to the Church." to the Church."

"Jonathan, come on," she said as she brushed past him.

As Patricia ran down the stairs she listened for the clatter of his footsteps behind and was relieved to hear them.

Would she have gone back for him, into the face of that woman?

Once outside Patricia threw her arms around him.

Then she saw Mary coming through the garage door, a raincoat thrown over her nightgown. She moved silently, swiftly. Patricia's gun didn't even seem to concern her.

A wind came up as they raced along the alley that led into Eighty-Fourth Avenue. Large drops of rain began to rustle the leaves. The air grew dense. The northern sky was a deeper black; a storm was coming.

Patricia pulled the collar of her blouse up around her neck. In a way a storm would help them by obscuring the sounds of their movement, but they would be conspicuous on the train if they arrived wet.

"We'll cut through Forest Park," she told Jonathan. "It's quickest." Would they be watching the Kew Gardens station? She could only hope not.

As they approached Park Lane a garbage truck clattered past, trailing from its closed maw like a flag the tatters of a red dress. They climbed the low wall that outlined Forest Park and set off among the trees.

Absolute silence and absolute darkness filled the park. Forest Park was so named because it contained the largest stand of virgin forest in New York City, uncut since before the founding of the United States.

Seventy-foot oaks and maples soared into the dark from a bed of mist-hazed ferns. She and Jonathan kept to familiar paths, worn clear by generations of shortcutters. Patricia plodded along, aware that the damp was rapidly making a mockery of her shoes. Pa.s.sing beneath the Interboro Parkway overpa.s.s she was briefly spared the trickle of rainwater down her neck. The woods were deeper on the far side, but they could now make use of one of the park roadways, a winding blacktop lane dotted with potholes, where carriages once had rolled and lovers strolled.

The wind made the ferns whisper and the tops of the trees utter long sighs.

When Patricia saw the gleam of water on metal ahead, she realized the enormous strategic error she had just made. Forest Park was not the same as a weed-choked alley. Here the Night Church could afford a few risks. Screams didn't matter in this wilderness, and there was no back doors on which to pound.

The Night Church had worked very fast. Mary could not have warned them more than a few minutes ago.

"Hold it." She grabbed his shoulder. "There's a van here."

"Where?"

She lifted his hand, placed it against the cold metal. His whole body jerked, as if he had been delivered an electric shock.

"Back up," she breathed. "Maybe they haven't seen us."

They turned off the road onto a path. She wasn't sure, but she thought it led out onto Park Place. If so, they would be safe in a few minutes. As they picked their way through the wet, slapping ferns she heard the distinct sound of footfalls on the roadway they had just left. Then there was crashing in the brush not fifty feet behind them.

"Oh, G.o.d, Jonathan, run!"

As they dashed through the slapping ferns she fingered the safety of her pistol again and again. She would use it, she told herself, she would certainly use it.

That thought was recurring so often she was beginning to be afraid she didn't really have the courage.

The ferns slapped her legs and she kept blundering into tree trunks. Beside her Jonathan clambered and fell along. A steady shuffling of brush followed them.

They went on like that for a while, with the Night Church fifty feet behind. The memory of the thing she had encoun-tered at Holy Spirit made her run like a madwoman, battling the wet, clawing undergrowth, her feet sliding in mud, sheets of rain obscuring her vision.

Was the thing behind them?

Jonathan screamed and fell against her. She clutched him, got him to his feet. "Come on, honey!"

Fingers whipped like snakes around her neck and she grabbed at them, trying to fight instead of scream, trying to keep the terror from rising up and blanking her ability to resist.

With a growl of naked rage Jonathan leaped across the three feet that separated him from whoever was on her and grabbed him. Instantly the arm was swept away and Patricia was confronted with a seething, rolling ma.s.s of flailing limbs. She heard blow after blow land. She heard air hiss from lungs and bones crunch.

"For G.o.d's sake, you're killing him!"

"That's-exactly- right!" right!" Jonathan said. Again and again his arm rose and fell, until there was no further movement from the figure beneath him. Jonathan stood up. Patricia was awed; she had never seen anything like it before. In a few seconds he had beaten a man senseless-maybe to death. Jonathan said. Again and again his arm rose and fell, until there was no further movement from the figure beneath him. Jonathan stood up. Patricia was awed; she had never seen anything like it before. In a few seconds he had beaten a man senseless-maybe to death.

She hugged him. "Are you hurt, darling?"

"I'm fine. Let's get a move on."

There was a shuffle of ferns ahead. A distinct click. "Drop the gun, please," said a quiet, cold voice.

Instead Patricia pointed it in the direction of the sound and pulled the trigger, a feeling of vicious and triumphant power surging through her.

The pistol went click. Click. Clickclick.

Something p.r.i.c.ked her neck. "Don't move, either of you." Another dark figure stepped out of the bushes beside Jonathan. She could see in his hand the same weapon that must be cold against her own neck. A stiletto.

Her stomach heaved. "Drop the pistol." The razored edge of the knife caressed her neck. "It's useless to you. The powder was taken out of the bullets the night you got it." She threw it to the ground, feeling the most intense helpless-ness. They even had access to her apartment. There was no escape from them, none at all. Even to have tried was stupid.

A two-way radio burped in the darkness. Patricia became aware that there were a large number of people around them. They had been at the center of a highly organized net all the time.

She threw the pistol to the ground. The pressure of steel against her neck diminished.

"Come with us, please."

Jonathan started off ahead of her. He was pushed roughly. Behind them flashlights bobbed in the path and voices were raised. They were trying to help the one Jonathan had beaten.

Patricia allowed herself a moment to be proud of him. He had tried hard; that meant a great deal.

Soon more of the search party met them. There were easily twenty people around, all in black turtlenecks and jeans. Occasional flashes of lightning revealed them to be utterly ordinary young men and women, clean-cut, even pleasant-looking.

n.o.body had scales, n.o.body had reptile eyes.

Patricia had visualized the Night Church in terms of batwing soup and gnarled old wizards. These men probably worked in law offices and insurance agencies by day, and the women raised kids in pretty Kew Gardens homes.