"No. Of course not."
"Are you sure? You'd better be sure before you go through with your plans tonight. Because if I'm forced to become one of you, I'll be crossing over with just one thought in mind: to find you. And when I do I won't stake your heart, I'll stake your arms and legs to the pilings of the Point Pleasant boardwalk where you can watch the sun rise and feel it slowly crisp your skin to charcoal."
Palmeri's smile wavered. "Impossible. You'll be different. You'll want to thank me. You'll wonder why you ever resisted."
"Better be sure of that, Alberto ... for your sake. Because I'll have all eternity to track you down. And I'll find you, Alberto. I swear it on my own grave. Think on that."
"Do you think an empty threat is going to cow me?"
"We'll find out how empty it is, won't we? But here's the deal: let Zev go and I'll let you be."
"You care that much for an old Jew?"
"He's something you never knew in life, and never will know: he's a friend."
And he gave me back my soul.
Palmeri leaned closer. His foul, nauseating breath wafted against Joe's face.
"A friend? How can you be friends with a dead man?" With that he straightened and turned toward the balcony. "Do him! Now!"
As Joe shouted out frantic pleas and protests, one of the undead climbed up the rubble toward Zev. Zev did not struggle. Joe saw him close his eyes, waiting. As the vampire reached out with the straight razor, Joe bit back a sob of grief and rage and helplessness. He was about to squeeze his own eyes shut when he saw a flame arc through the air from one of the windows. It struck the floor with a crash of glass and a wooomp! of exploding flame.
Joe had only heard of such things, but he immediately realized that he had just seen his first Molotov cocktail in action. The splattering gasoline splashed a nearby vampire who began running in circles, screaming as it beat at its flaming clothes. But its cries were drowned by the roar of other voices, a hundred or more. Joe looked around and saw people—men, women, teenagers— climbing in the windows, charging through the front doors. The women held crosses on high while the men wielded long wooden pikes—broom, rake, and shovel handles whittled to sharp points. Joe recognized most of the faces from the Sunday Masses he had said here for years.
St. Anthony's parishioners were back to reclaim their church.
"Yes!" he shouted, not sure of v/hether to laugh or cry. But when he saw the rage in Palmeri's face, he laughed. "Too bad, Alberto!"
Palmeri made a lunge at his throat but cringed away as a woman with an upheld crucifix and a man with a pike charged the altar—Lacey and Carl.
"Are you all right, Uncle Joe?" Lacey said, her eyes wide and angry. "Did they—?"
"You got here just in time."
She pulled out a butterfly knife, flipped it open with one hand, and began sawing at the rope around Joe's right wrist. She was using her left only; her right arm didn't seem to be of much use.
"Told ya I wouldn't let ya down, didn't I, Fadda?" Carl said, grinning. "Didn't I?"
"That you did, Carl. I don't think I've ever been so glad to see anyone in my entire life. But how—?"
"We told 'em. We run through the parish, Lacey and me, goin house to house. We told 'em Fadda Joe was in trouble at the church and we let him down before but we shouldn't let him down again. He come back for us, now we gotta go back for him. Simple as that. And then they started runnin house to house, and afore ya knowed it, we had ourselfs a little army. We come to kick ass, Fadda, if you'll excuse the expression."
"Kick all the ass you can, Carl."
Joe glanced around and spotted a sixtyish black woman he recognized as Lilly Green. He saw her terror-glazed eyes as she swiveled around, looking this way and that; he saw how the crucifix trembled in her hand. She wasn't going to kick too much ass in her state, but she was here, God bless her, she was here for him and for St. Anthony's despite the terror that so obviously filled her. His heart swelled with love for these people and pride in their courage.
As soon as his arms were free, Joe sat up and took the knife from Lacey. He sawed at his leg ropes, looking around the church.
The oldest and youngest members of the parishioner army were stationed at the windows and doors where they held crosses aloft, cutting off the vampires' escape, while all across the nave—chaos. Screams, cries, and an occasional shot echoed through St. Anthony's. The undead and their Vichy were outnumbered three to one. The undead seemed blinded and confused by all the crosses around them. Despite their superhuman strength, it appeared that some were indeed getting their asses kicked. A number were already writhing on the floor, impaled on pikes. As Joe watched, he saw the middle-aged Gonzales sisters, Maria and Immaculata, crucifixes held before them, backing a vampire into a corner. As it cowered there with its arms across its face,
Maria's husband Hector charged in with a sharpened rake handle held like a lance and ran it through.
But a number of parishioners lay in inert, bloody heaps on the floor, proof that the undead and the Vichy were claiming their share of victims too.
Joe freed his feet and hopped off the altar. He looked around for Palmeri— he wanted Palmeri—but the undead priest had lost himself in the melee. Joe glanced up at the balcony and saw that Zev was still hanging there, struggling to free himself. He started across the nave to help him.
ZEV . . .
Zev hated that he should be hung up here like a chicken in a deli window. He tried again to pull his upper body up far enough to reach his leg ropes but he couldn't get close. He had never been one for exercise; doing a sit-up flat on the floor would have been difficult, so what made him think he could do the equivalent maneuver hanging upside down by his feet? He dropped back, exhausted, and felt the blood rush to his head again. His vision swam, his ears pounded, he felt as if the skin of his face might burst open. Much more of this and he'd have a stroke or worse maybe.
He watched the upside-down battle below and was glad to see the undead getting the worst of it. These people—seeing Carl among them, Zev assumed they were part of St. Anthony's parish—were ferocious, almost savage in their attacks on the undead. All their pent-up rage and fear was being released upon their tormentors in a single burst. It was almost frightening.
Suddenly he felt a hand on his foot. Someone was untying his knots. Thank you, Lord. Soon he would be on his feet again. As the cords came loose he decided he should at least attempt to participate in his own rescue.
Once more, Zev thought. Once more I'll try.
With a grunt he levered himself up, straining, stretching to grasp something, anything. A hand came out of the darkness and he reached for it. But Zev's relief turned to horror when he felt the cold clamminess of the thing that clutched him, that pulled him up and over the balcony rail with inhuman strength. His bowels threatened to evacuate when Palmeri's grinning face loomed not six inches from his own.
"It's not over yet, Jew," he said softly, his foul breath clogging Zev's nose and throat. "Not by a long shot!"
He felt Palmeri's free hand ram into his belly and grip his belt at the buckle, then the other hand grab a handful of his shirt at the neck. Before he could struggle or cry out, he was lifted free of the floor and hoisted over the balcony rail.
And the dybbuk's voice was in his ear.
"Joseph called you a friend, Jew. Let's see if he really meant it."
JOE . . .
Joe was halfway across the floor of the nave when he heard Palmeri's voice echo above the madness.
"Stop them, Joseph! Stop them now or I drop your friend!"
Joe looked up and froze. Palmeri stood at the balcony rail, leaning over it, his eyes averted from the nave and all its newly arrived crosses. At the end of his outstretched arms was Zev, suspended in mid-air over the splintered remains of the pews, over a particularly large and ragged spire of wood that pointed directly at the middle of Zev's back. Zev's frightened eyes were flashing between Joe and the giant spike below.
Around him Joe heard the sounds of the melee drop a notch, then drop another as all eyes were drawn to the tableau on the balcony.
"A human can die impaled on a wooden stake just as well as a vampire!" Palmeri cried. "And just as quickly if it goes through his heart. But it can take hours of agony if it rips through his gut."
St. Anthony's grew silent as the fighting stopped and each faction backed away to a different side of the church, leaving Joe alone in the middle.
"What do you want, Alberto?"
"First I want all those crosses put away so that I can see!"
Joe looked to his right where his parishioners stood.