Carole lost more time sobbing. Then, from somewhere, she found the strength to rise. She wanted to stay by his side, never leave him, never let anyone else near him, but she knew that couldn't be. She couldn't stay here and neither could he. She knew what had to be done. She had work to do. The Lord's work.
She wandered the basement until she found a dusty old sheet draped over a chair. She pulled it off and, with infinite care, wrapped it around Father Joe . .. her Father Joe. She tried to lift him but he was too heavy. She needed help ...
OLIVIA . . .
"Someone is here. From Franco."
Olivia lifted her mouth from the bloody throat of the spindly old man strapped to the table in the feeding room.
"Who is it?"
Jules, the unofficial leader of her get-guards, shrugged. "I've never seen him before. All I know is that he says his name is Artemis and his eye—"
"I know about his eye."
Artemis . . . one of Franco's closest get. This must be important if he'd sent Artemis. It had to be about Gregor. Damn that fool.
She looked down at the quivering old man, still alive but in shock and not too much longer for this world. His blood was as thin as his scrawny body. She remembered India. She had been with the first wave through the Middle East, through Riyadh and Baghdad and Cairo and Jerusalem. Lots of blood there, but then they'd moved on to India, lovely, overcrowded India . . . she had quite literally bathed in blood in Bombay.
But here, good cattle were hard to come by of late. She wasn't sure whether that was a result of a thinning of the herd or a thinning of the number of serfs at her disposal. Franco was either going to have to send her more serfs or widen her territory.
Olivia would have much preferred another territory altogether, a peaceful one with no foment. But, thanks to Gregor's demise, she'd inherited this one and was stuck with it, at least until it was tamed.
She pointed to the old man as she rose. "You can finish him after you bring Artemis to the sleeping room. I wish to meet with him alone."
Jules frowned. "Do you think that's wise? Everything is so unsettled."
"We have nothing to fear from Artemis."
Jules turned and headed back upstairs.
Olivia paced the feeding room. She was going stir crazy down here. She hadn't left the Post Office once throughout this long, long night. She'd been about to go out earlier but Gregor's death changed that. She'd been sequestered in the basement ever since. Only half a night, but she felt humiliated. She was supposed to be the predator, the fox, the wolf, but here she was, cowering like a frightened hare in its burrow.
Yes, she was here at the insistence of her get, but she hadn't put up much of a fight. Gregor was foolish but he'd been tough. If the vigilantes had managed to kill him, they could kill her, and she might well be their next target.
She'd sent serfs and one of her get out to find the source of the explosion, to see if that was what had done in Gregor. They'd returned with a tale of a blasted house with Gregor's head spiked on a piece of splintered wood in the front yard and his body in pieces within.
These vigilantes had taken to making bombs. That was the real reason she was down here in the basement. The Post Office had thick granite walls. Even if they somehow managed to toss a bomb through the front doors—closed, locked, and guarded now—it would have no effect down here.
Jules returned and closed the door behind him. "He's next door, waiting."
Olivia nodded, took a breath, then made her entrance. She found Artemis, his back to her, standing among the beds and cots that her get had moved into what had been a storage space. This was where she spent the daylight hours.
"Bonsoir, Artemis."
Artemis turned. He grinned and stared at her with his one good eye.
"English, Olivia. My French is about as good as your Greek."
Olivia tried not to stare at his ruined eye. With his curly black hair and olive skin, he'd probably been handsome once. Too handsome, perhaps. But that eye—she had bathed in blood and had cut off heads, she'd ripped still-beating hearts from chests, but she found that dead eye repulsive. Olivia had lost her left little finger once—an accident with a sliding glass door—but it had grown back. She, like other undead, could regenerate most lost body parts, except of course a head or a heart. But certain types of injury did not heal.
Artemis had been a real up and comer in Franco's get until he allowed a child he'd been about to sup on to jab a crucifix into his eye. He might have lived it down if the eye had regenerated, but wounds from holy objects never healed. His puckered scar and sunken socket were eternal reminders of his blunder, and he'd sunk to the rank of one of Franco's get-guards and errand boys.
"Very well, Artemis," she said, switching to English. "But I just want you to know that I had no control over Gregor. Whatever he did, he did on his own. I am in no way responsible for what happened to him. You can tell Franco that."
Artemis laughed. "Franco did not send me here about Gregor. He wanted to let you know that he has personally broken the back of the insurrection."
"How, pray, did he do that?"
"By capturing the priest himself, the one who took over your little church here."
"Not my church. It was Gregor's responsibility."
"But it happened while you were here on your inspection tour. Don't worry. That is of no import to Franco."
Olivia seated herself on the bed where she spent her hours of daysleep.
"Broken their backs, has he? What did Franco think of Gregor's idea that the insurgents in the church and the vigilantes were two separate groups?"
"He gave it the amount of consideration it deserved, which is none at all. The priest didn't even bother to deny that he was part of the vigilantes."
Olivia took some small satisfaction in being right, but she wondered . . .
"How is merely capturing the priest going to break the back of this situation?"
Artemis smiled. "Franco has turned the priest—not by himself, but by one of his pet ferals. He was delivered back to his own rectory less than an hour ago. He's been hidden in the basement. Come sundown he'll be one of us and will start to prey on his own followers. And as days go by he'll become increasingly depraved looking, increasingly vicious and feral. Isn't it simply delicious?"
"Perhaps. But it's complicated. I prefer simpler, direct solutions. Why doesn't he just burn them out and capture them?"
"You know Franco. He'd deem a frontal assault unworthy of his intellect. He saw too many Dr. Mabuse films while he was living in Germany, I think. Sees himself as the Grand Manipulator, the Demonic Maestro, the Great Orchestrator of life and death and undeath. He must work his coups with style, with elan."
"Elan is all fine and good, but I'd much prefer to see this over and done with."
"But you're not in charge, are you?"
Olivia didn't dignify that remark with an answer. "So what are we to do then? Sit around and hope this undead priest follows Franco's script?"
"We'll be providing direction. We'll watch after sundown and give him a little help if he needs it. Sometime during the next night or two—before he starts losing his mind—we'll question him about the vigilantes. Just in case there are cells outside the church. After that, he's on his own."
"I'm not so sure I like the idea of a feral running loose."
"Good point. He may become uncontrollable. If his followers don't get him first, we may have to put him down ourselves."
Olivia had to smile. "Not much of a future for this priest. What's his name, by the way?"
Artemis shrugged. "You know, I never thought to ask."