Cemetery Dance

It had come together like clockwork, a joy to witness. The police had been taken totally by surprise. The group of initial protesters, carefully outfitted to look as nonthreatening as possible, had lulled the cops into thinking it would be a small, ineffectual protest, all bark and no bite. And then within the space of mere minutes all the other groups had arrived, quietly, on foot, from multiple directions — and immediately, as pla

No doubt reinforcements were already on their way. The NYPD were not a force to be trifled with. But by the time they arrived, Plock and his crowd would be inside the Ville and well on their way to accomplishing their objective — routing the murderers and, perhaps, finding the kidnapped woman, Nora Kelly.

The last of the crowd streamed through the gate and massed in the field facing the front entrance to the Ville, spreading out like shock troops. They parted as Plock stepped to the front for a few last words. The Ville itself stood silently in the evening twilight, brooding and monolithic, the only sign of life a few yellow windows high in the fabric of the church. The front door was shut and barred, but it would present no obstacle to the men with battering rams standing silent at the head of the crowd, ready to move. Plock held up a hand and the crowd quieted.

"My dear friends." He pitched his voice low, which induced an even deeper silence among the people. "What are we here for?" He allowed a pause. "Let us be clear about that, of all things. What are we here for?"

He looked around. "We are here to break down that door and drive these animal torturers, these murderers, out. We will do it through our implacable moral condemnation, the weight of our numbers. We will press them from the field. We will liberate the animals in that hellhole."

The police helicopter circled overhead, still broadcasting its unintelligible message. He ignored it.

"One thing of the utmost importance I say to you: we are not killers. We will hold and maintain the moral high ground. But we are not pacifists, either, and if they choose to fight, we will fight. Wewill defend ourselves and wewill defend the animals."

He took a deep breath. He knew that he wasn't an eloquent speaker, but he had the power of his convictions and he could see the crowd was stoked.

The police were coming up from the road now, but their numbers were ridiculously small compared with his own and Plock ignored them. He'd be inside the Ville before the police could even regroup. "Are we ready?" he cried.

There was an answering READY!

He pointed. "Go!"

With a single roar, the crowd surged forward toward the main doors of the Ville. They appeared to have been recently repaired and reinforced. The two men with battering rams were at the fore — front, and they hit the doors at a run, wielding their rams, first one then the other, slamming them into the doors. The timbers shivered and split, and in less than a minute they were stove in, the crowd surging forward and pushing the remnants away. Plock joined the masses as they poured into a dark, narrow alleyway lined with listing wooden buildings. It was strangely deserted, no inhabitants to be seen. The roar from the crowd rose like an animal cry, amplified by the narrow confines of the Ville, and they broke into a trot, rounding the corner of the alley and coming face — to — face with the ancient church.

At this the crowd hesitated. The church was forbidding; it stood like a medieval structure of Boschean strangeness, crooked, half timbered with rude — looking buttresses projecting out into the air before stabbing into the ground, bristling and massive. The portal to the church stood in front — a second set of timbered doors, banded and riveted with iron.

The hesitation lasted only a moment. Then the roar went up again, stronger than ever, and the men with battering rams advanced again and stood on either side of the banded doors, swinging the rams in an alternating, asynchronous rhythm: boom — boom! boom — boom! boom — boom!A massive cracking sound a

And there in the dimness, blocking the way, stood two men. One was tall and striking, dressed in a long brown cloak, hood drawn back, heavy brows and massive cheekbones almost hiding a pair of black eyes, pale skin glowing in the light of a freshly rising moon, his nose like the blade of a knife, curved and honed. The other man, shorter and coarser looking, was gowned in a fantastically decorated ceremonial gown. He was clearly a holy man of some sort. He stared out at the invaders, his eyes glittering with malice.

The i

Plock shoved forward and faced him. "Who are you?"

"My name is Bossong. And it is my community you are desecrating with your presence."

Plock drew himself up. He was fully aware that he was half his opponent's size and twice his width. Nevertheless, when he replied, his voice crackled with conviction: "We will proceed and you will step aside. You have no right to be here, vivisector. "

The men stood stock — still, and to his surprise Plock could see, standing in the red dimness behind him, at least a hundred people.

"We do no harm to anyone," Bossong went on. "We only want to be left alone."

"No harm? What do you call slitting i

"Those are honored sacrifices, a central tenet of our religion—"

"Bull! And what about the woman you kidnapped? Where is she? And where are the animals? Where do you keep them? Tell me!"

"I know nothing of any woman."

"Liar!"

Now the priest abruptly held up a rattle in one hand and a strange — looking bundle of feathers in the other, and broke into a loud, quavering chant in some foreign language, as if casting a curse on the invading force.

Plock reached up and slapped the bundle out of his hand. "Get that mumbo — jumbo out of my face! Step aside, or we'll run you down!"

The man stared, saying nothing. Plock stepped forward as if to walk through him, and the crowd behind him responded with a roar and surged forward, propelling Plock against his will into the priest and driving him back, and in a moment the man was down, the crowd pouring around him into the dark church, Bossong pushed rudely to one side, the congregants inside grown hesitant at the sight of their fallen priest, crying out in fear and anger and outrage at the violation of their sanctuary.

"To the animals!" Plock cried. "Find the animals! Free the animals!"

Chapter 67

Pendergast's clotheswere torn and bloody and his ears still rang from the attack. He propped himself up and rose unsteadily to his feet. His encounter with the man — beast had knocked him senseless for a few minutes, and he'd come to in the dark. He reached into his suit coat, removed a tiny LED light he carried for emergencies such as this, and shined it around. Slowly, methodically, he searched the damp floor for his gun, but it was nowhere to be seen. He could make out faint signs of struggle, with what were evidently D'Agosta's fleeing footprints, the barefooted painted man in pursuit.