Chapter 19

  June had run for most of the night. As she ran through the dirt and plains grass she was struck with a feeling that she had run before. It was like a thought on the tip of her tongue, just out of reach but omnipresent.

  When the sun began to rise she was not sure how far she had managed to run from the cave where her captors slept. She could no longer make out the shape of the rock outcroppings on the horizon but she did not know if that was far enough. “Please Lord, give me a sign of salvation.” She prayed, on instinct her hand dropped into her pocket for her rosary, it was gone. If could have fallen out when she was running or more likely it was taken from her by the demons that brought death to her home.

  She allowed herself to slow down slightly but only after she felt a cramp beginning in her Achilles tendon. Even in the early rays of sunlight she knew it would be a very hot day and she was lost. The rough country around the Convent was as foreign to her as the shores of China. She needed shelter, water and food.

  To pass the time of her journey at her slower pace she recalled from memory the store of Moses and the Israelites after their exodus from Pharaoh. She did not have a Sea to part to the ability to cause plagues to befall her enemies but she was wondering alone. After she replayed the entire book of Exodus, she did the same with the story of the Flood. By the time the seas had swallowed the Earth and Noah was safely in his Arc she began to see shapes in the distance.

  It started off as a single building before being joined by a dozen more. She had no idea how far away they were, they were still hidden in the haze of heat and distance but it gave her a goal. She continued to remember all of the Bible stories that she would read to the children at the orphanage. The stories distracted her mind away from all the death and violence she had seen and the pain that enveloped her entire body.

  By the time the sun was at its apex she was close enough to the buildings that she could tell it was a town. A town where something was happening, she could hear a loud commotion. Shouts and howls slowly morphed into broken words.

  “Abishai Aebi.” “Heavenly Host.” “Evil that has taken over this town”

  From the broken words that June could make out she thought at first it could be some sort of traveling holy man or revival. Those thoughts were quickly dashed with the unmistakable sound of gunfire. The still air was ripped apart by the sound of black powder and lead. More unintelligible words and the most putrid smell she had ever witnessed followed.

  She was not behind one of the buildings on the far edge of town. Coated from head to toe in the dirt of the road she walked onto the main street. A gallows was set up at the opposite end and it appeared the whole of the town had come to witness the hanging. The large crowd that was gathered in front of the gallows were spread in the middle.

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  Some invisible force made the tiredness in her legs disappear as she began to walk faster to this crowd of humanity. On the ground in front of the gallows was a drifting pile of dirt, a drifting pile of dirt that had the entire crowds attention drawn to it. Even more drawing of her attention was not the pile of dirt but how as she got within one hundred feet of the crowd the spotless blue sky became covered in steel black thunderheads.

  Standing on the gallows platform was a man with a rifle. He was dressed in rags and showed signs of having been in a fight recently. His white skin covered in purplish bruises. When the last speck of dirt had flown away on the wind the crowd turned to the man in the rags.

  “He killed Marshal.”

  “Kill him!”

  “He serves the False God!”

  “Burn him in the fires!”

  The crowd had morphed into a mob and June found herself stuck in the middle. She had no reason to want his man dead, she had no reason to want any man dead. It was not Christian to wish death on another.

  The man in the rags raised his rifle in a defensive manner, sweeping it back and forth at the crowd. “Allow me to leave in peace and no harm shall come to you!” His gaze looked into the faces of each person until he found June.

  When his eyes met hers he stopped. “Sister.” The word came from his mouth with a tone of solace. How did he know that she was a Nun? June thought instantly.

  The hairs on the back of June's neck stood up, not from the strange man in rags calling her out but by the crowd turning their collective eyes on her.

  “She's one of them.”

  “The False God's whores!”

  “Burn them both!”

  Abishai fired his rifle over the heads of the crowd, June could hear the bullet whistle overhead.

  “Leave the Sister alone or I will dispatch each and everyone of you from this world.”

  “You don' have 'nuff bullets for that Hospitaller. All I need is one.” A man who was clearly a farmer by his clothing pulled his pistol from his waist and fired a shot at Abishai. The bullet grazed the top of shoulder, tearing the linen shirt and drawing a thin strip of blood.

  Abishai responded with a bullet of his own, the farmers hand was there one moment and gone the next, leaving behind a bloody stump. “Sister, I suggest you run.”

  June did not even answer, she turned back the way she came and sprinted. Her bare feet smashing hard against the soil ground of town. Just like she did when she ran from her captors she did not look back. Even when the sound of the mob and hooves began behind her she did not look back. If she had what happened next may not have scared her as much.

  As she was passing Ewan's saloon at the end of town she felt herself lifted off the ground. Before she could even react to being lifted she was sat down on the saddle of a horse. Aquinas.

  “Sister, do not look back. I will explain who I am later just know that He has sent me to find you.” Abishai whispered in her ear, his body keeping hers facing forward. “Purga hunc locum, effer furorem tuum et remove malum!”

  If June had turned around and looked back down the road she would have been blinded, however she listened to the strange man in rags and did not look back.

  The prayer that Abishai had said brought down a dozen small bolts of lightening burned through the sky and into the skulls of the attack mob. In an instant each of their brains were crystallized into solid orbs of glass, all at once the mob collapsed.