"...By this sentence we cast you away as an impenitent heretic and sorceress."

"PORTER!" I screamed again as I strained to make my way up the stairs.

I caught my right foot on the edge of a crumbling step and slipped to the side. I quickly grabbed the handrail and corrected for the misstep before tumbling back down.

"In accordance with the thirty second question we do hereby deliver you unto the power of our most Holy God. As you, Millicent Renee Sullivan are damned in body and soul, your sentence on this day is death."

I was only a few steps from the top when I heard a metallic squeak pierce the night. It came as a slow, repetitious noise, fading then sharply breaking through once again. I was certain I could hear a whimpering sob behind it.

"The sentence, to be executed immediately and without appeal in the manner of hanging."

The high-pitched squeal made a violent increase in cadence, sounding like metal spinning quickly against metal, all while in desperate need of lubrication. There was a creaking noise in its wake, and I heard a choking gurgle.

The muscle in my leg was beginning to untie, and I pushed hard, taking the last two steps at once. I arced myself out through the doorway at the top and out onto the creaking wooden floor.

The light of countless candles stationed about the large room created glowing pockets in the darkness that spread illumination in toward center. Porter was standing near the center of the space, staring directly at me. Next to him, swinging two feet above the floor was Star, partially nude and streaked with blood. The noose was tightening around her neck, and even at this distance I could see her kicking and bucking her body against the constriction.

Porter's solemn voice hit my ears with absolute clarity. "May the Lord Jesus Christ have mercy upon her soul."

Whatever it was that I screamed, it was completely unintelligible, even to me. The sound was that of a madman; a banshee's wail that froze blood solid even as it ran through veins. It was a cry that could only emanate from something not of thisworld.

I ran head on at him, striding harder than I believed myself capable and ignoring any pain or complaint my body elected to issue. My hot breath continued to expel in the tortured scream right up to the point where I slammed into him full force.

He had braced himself for the impact, but my momentum was more than he could bear. He folded over at the waist as I drove into him, and we both crashed to the floor in a tangle. I was at the top of the pile, and I pushed myself up with my left arm then brought my right over in a wide arc toward his face. He threw his own arm up and tried rolling to the side, which brought my fist slamming hard against the back of his shoulder. I pulled my hand back and drove it home once again as he moved, glancing downward along his back.

I pushed back and dragged myself up to my knees as he scrambled away from me. Rage was telling me to dive on him and continue punching. I was just about to give in to the anger when as I leaned back to launch myself, something thudded against the back of my head. I wheeled about in search of the unknown attacker, swinging my left arm out in a stiff arc.

Instead, I saw a pair of legs dangling in front of my face and heard the gurgling whimper of the young woman hanging above me. I got to my feet and looked up, frantically following the noose from around her neck up through the aged block and tackle, then back down to where it was tied off on a supporting column.

I rushed across to the column and began working my fingers into the knot. The nylon rope was twined about a large steel spike that had been driven deeply into the age-hardened wood. It was solid and had obviously been placed there long ago. I fought to loosen the tight braid, but her weight pulling back against it was making the task all put impossible.

Panic began to seize me once again, competing with the rage for control of my conscious self. I hooked my arm over the taut angle of the rope and pulled down, lifting her a pair of inches farther from the floor but gaining some slack on the knot. I hated doing it, but it was the only way I could think of to get the leverage I needed.

Just as I began working the tangle loose, hot pain bit into my back, and I was forced hard against the upright beam.

Air expelled from my lungs, and my hands flailed away from the task. I felt the rope snap taut once again, and it flung my arm up like a catapult. A heavy fist, or so I thought, connected with my side. The punch was concentrated on a pinpoint and sent a lance of pain through my ribcage. I sucked in a quick breath as I was jerked backward, and I leaned into it; spinning myself in an arc with my right arm flailing upward and out ahead of me.

I connected with something both soft enough to qualify as flesh and hard enough to qualify as a skull. I stumbled through the spin and fell downward while holding my side. I landed on the plank floor with a heavy thud. My coat was seriously impeding my ability to move with any agility whatsoever as was the flak vest. I found myself wishing that I had gone ahead and removed them when I had the opportunity.I looked up to see that my blow had rocked Porter backwards, but unfortunately, he was none the worse for wear and was now bearing down on me. The reason behind the extreme concentration of the strike to my ribs became immediately apparent when I saw the dim light flicker from the blade in his hand.

I tried to kick away as he literally fell on top of me but was too late. My mind flashed on the SWAT team downstairs, and I wondered why the hell they weren't up here yet. Porter's body pinned my legs, and for the first time, I saw his left hand gathered into a misshapen claw as he thudded it against me like a club. I jerked my head back just in time to see the knife arcing through the air above me, clutched tightly in his right hand.

I threw my left arm up to block and felt his connect. I was too late to halt the stab or even deflect it, but I did manage to slow it somewhat. Still, it kept coming, and I closed my eyes. Dull pain erupted through my chest as the large blade came down straight where my heart was thumping wildly. I felt a tingle through my flesh somewhere just to the left of my sternum, and I winced. I wondered for a brief second if this was how it felt to be stabbed, because I had expected it to be far more acute.

I exhaled and opened my eyes slowly to see that the knife was still clutched in his hand with the shiny blade lying horizontally across my chest. I sucked in a quick breath and immediately balled up my fist.

I slammed my right hand hard against the side of Porter's face as I fought to kick away from him. I felt my own pain as my knuckles glance downward, grating across his teeth and ripping a gash in them. He howled as I quickly seized his left wrist and twisted the appendage as hard as I could.

He rolled away, and I scrambled to my feet. Behind me I could hear footsteps as the SWAT team made their way up the stairwell. Only a few more seconds, I mutely told myself. A few more seconds, and this will all be over. I started again toward the rope holding Star aloft and heard Porter's near breathless voice wheezing as it came toward me.

"As you, Rowan Linden Gant, are damned in body and soul, your sentence on this day is death." He inhaled with an audible heave.

I spun back toward him and steeled myself. He was standing a few steps away with the knife raised over his head. Standing as tall as Ben, he towered over me, but I held fast, still reaching behind me for the rope.

"The sentence..." he sputtered, then coughed. "The sentence to be executed immediately and without appeal..."

He launched himself at me and brought the knife downward. I tried to sidestep him but still caught the brunt of his force against me. I let out an agonized scream as the blade ripped through my coat sleeve and bit into my upper arm. I screamed again as he wrenched it back out and made a second attempt at aiming the weapon.

Out of reflex, I stretched my hand up and grasped his forearm, locking my elbowso that he couldn't thrust the knife downward. We struggled in a violent twist as we pushed against one another.

Shouts from the SWAT entry team sounded from across the room as a flurry of footsteps vibrated through the wooden planks that made up the floor.

We stumbled backward in a clench, and as we began falling, I heard the sound of something wet splattering nearby. Somewhere in the back of my mind, my olfactory sense absently registered the pungent odor of urine and bowel.

I crashed downward with Porter on top of me and immediately heard a loud creak followed by a sharp crack. A fraction of a second after the disturbing noise bit into my ears, the section of floor we occupied gave way and opened up on the room below.

The sensation of weightlessness I had experienced earlier when I vaulted from the back of the van was now magnified tenfold. We seemed to float in place for a brief moment, and then we plummeted downward in a tangle of arms and legs.

When we hit bottom, we were engulfed in a cloud of dirt and dust that had collected over the years. We had started rolling to the side as we fell, so the detritus that was once the floor above now rained down on and around us. There was enough trash covering the floor to cushion a portion of our fall, but as we hit I felt my left forearm snap. The sharp pain shot up into my shoulder, and I let out a yelp. I think I would have passed out had it not been for the adrenalin coursing through my veins.

Porter had rolled almost completely under me before we hit, and he had taken the brunt of the impact. He was definitely injured, but he was still alive.

He was still struggling to regain his breath as I pushed myself up onto my knees with my one good arm. I groped through the debris with my good hand and felt the handle of the knife. My fingers closed around it automatically as the rage once again took control.

I felt myself raising the knife as a swath of light fell across us. I heard a commanding voice call out, "Police! Drop the weapon!"

I hesitated for a moment, a dim pinpoint of logic winking at me from behind the curtain of rage that shrouded my mind.

"DROP THE WEAPON!".

The light of rationality faded to black, and I felt my hand begin downward.

I only remember three things after that: a bright flash, a loud explosion, and the feeling that my chest had just caved in.

Chapter 39:.

The first thing I did was cough.

The second thing I did was groan.

The third thing I did was open my eyes.

When my vision started to clear, I could see that there was a white ceiling above me-but not too far above. At least that is how it looked. My depth perception seemed to be a bit off for some odd reason.

There was something resembling artificial light filtering in to aid my sight, which was a far cry better than darkness. Why darkness stuck out in my mind I didn't know, but I didn't need to give it much thought to decide that I preferred the light.

There was a lot of noise too. Things like distant voices and staticky radios. I picked out the rumble of a motor and even a few electronic sounding beeps. There were countless other things, both identifiable and not, but I very quickly grew tired of trying to associate names with them.

Everything in my head was a jumbled blur. I had no idea where I was or why.

There wasn't an inch of my body that wasn't killing me, but at the moment the real pain seemed to be centered on my chest. Just the very sensation told me that I had been hit by something, but I couldn't begin to say what. I knew what it felt like, and that was a freight train; but since I appeared to still be in one piece, I decided that might be an exaggeration on my part.

I lay there for a moment trying to remember. There seemed to be something important stuck in the back of my head, and it was fighting a desperate struggle to be released from its holding cell. It felt like an imperative, something urgent, but I couldn't connect with it and that just brought on a feeling of frustration.

"Hurts like a motherfucker don't it, paleface?" Ben's words worked their way into my ears over the multitudes of ambient sounds.

I rolled my head in the direction of his voice and blinked; then I blinked again.

When I was still unable to focus, it dawned on me that I wasn't wearing my glasses.

Somewhere in the dark ball of memories that was bouncing around inside my head, I seemed to recall having lost them. But at the same time, I remembered having another pair. The attempt at reasoning just made me hurt even more, so I gave up and centered on his blurry face.

"What?" I croaked.

He started to repeat himself. "I said, hurts like a motherfu-"

"Yeah," I eked out the gravelly word to cut him off. "I got that." I cleared my throat and coughed again before continuing. "What hit me?"

"Piece of lead," he said. He held up his hand; thumb and forefinger spread slightly apart, then added, "About so big, actually. But it was movin' pretty fast."

"Porter shot me?" I asked.

"No, not Porter.""YOU shot me?!" I half yelped then immediately regretted it.

"Hell no," he returned. "SWAT did it. If I'd shot you I probably woulda aimed for your goddamned hard head."

"They shot me?" I muttered.

"Hey, look at it this way, white man," he offered. "You just joined an elite club.

That friggin' vest you were wearin' saved your ass."

"But they shot me," I said again, confusion permeating my voice. "Why?"

"Row, what the hell? You got amnesia or somethin'? They didn't have much choice. You were gettin' ready to stab Porter to death with a big ass butcher knife.

Don'tcha remember?"

His words triggered the mechanism that released the lock on the cell door, opening it wide to allow the urgent memories of the evening to flood back in.

Everything rushed to the front of my brain and then vied for my undivided attention.

One item stood out from all the others, and I seized on it immediately.

"Star?" I asked. "How's Star? Is she okay?"

My friend stayed conspicuously silent and simply looked away. My brain was adjusting to the blurry picture being fed to it by my uncorrected vision, and I watched as he brought his left hand up to smooth back his hair then massage his neck.

"Let's talk about that later," he said.

"Tell me she's okay, Ben," I insisted.

He hung his head down and continued to work his fingers against a muscle in his neck. His only audible answer was a heavy sigh.

The stark memory of the wet sound just before Porter and I crashed through the floor returned to echo in my ears. The phantom odor of urine and feces sharply tingled my nose, and I instantly realized I had been standing next to Star when she had died.

I wanted to cry, but my body refused. It had nothing left to give. Not now, anyway.

"They should have let me kill the sonofabitch," I muttered.

"I'm sorry, Row," he returned quietly.

"At least tell me they shot him too," I said, my voice a mixture of pleading and demanding.

"No," he shook his head as he uttered the word. "He's already been transported to the hospital."

"Critical?"

"No. He's worse off than you," he replied, "but not critical. He'll make it."

"Too fucking bad," I said."He's off the street, Row," he offered. "It's over."

"Yeah. Tell that to Randy and Star."

"Row..." he let his voice trail off.

"What happens now?" I asked.

"Whaddaya mean," he replied with a shrug. "We're sittin' here in the back of an ambulance. They'll be takin' you to the hospital in just a few."

"So that's where we are," I said.

"Man, what did they dope you up with?"

"The way I hurt? Nothing."

"The way you sound? Something," he replied.

"So which one?"

"Which one what?"