The Dire King (Jackaby #4)(59)

I turned my eyes back to the cross just in time to see the rend rip through the wood completely. The bottom fell away, sending a wooden plank with one splintered end clattering to the floor below. The top of the cross swung apart as well, one arm swaying to the right and an L-shaped section dangling loosely to the left.

“Go!” Jackaby yelled. I heard the sound of Morwen’s blade sliding free of its sheath, but I did not turn to look before I jumped back into the Annwyn.

I was met on the other side not by the dimly lit interior of the keep, but by intense sunlight and a startlingly long drop. The tower was four stories tall, and I had just slipped out at the top of it. From this dizzying height, I had an excellent view of the hundreds of monsters assembled in the courtyard thirty or forty feet below me. I yelped in alarm and clutched frantically at the wall, my hand unexpectedly finding purchase around a narrow copper pipe. I clung to it with both hands, feeling the metal sway.

I began to hear the shouts from below. The gruesome garrison had spotted me. I tried not to focus on the noise. My hands were shaking, and sweat trickled down my temple. It came as very little consolation that the fall would kill me before those brutes down below ever got the chance.

Jackaby burst out of the rend beside me, and I instinctively shot out an arm and grabbed him by his ragged, flapping coat. He clutched at my arm with one hand and at his ridiculous hat with the other.

“Pipe!” I managed, with remarkable articulation, given the circumstances. “Grab it!”

He slammed into the wall beneath me and my hand flew back to the pipe, which squeaked and leaned about six inches farther from the wall. I felt dizzy.

“This is not a measurable improvement from the church,” said Jackaby.

The building rumbled and shook. I felt my grip slipping.

And then Morwen flew through the gap. She locked eyes on me for a fleeting second and swung the black blade hard toward me. The obsidian edge sparked against the stones and spun out of her hands, and then her eyes widened.

Morwen Finstern fell.

I closed my eyes, my breath coming in gasps and gulps. Below us, the crowd began to circle around the nixie’s still body. A hundred eyes climbed the tower up toward us on our precarious perch.

“Back to the church,” grunted Jackaby. “Sooner would be better.”

The church was dark and cool and quiet as I hopped down from the upturned pew. My legs were about to give out. My hands were throbbing. My chest was on fire. I collapsed onto the nearest bench.

Jackaby popped back through behind me and scooted down the pew to join me. For a long time he said nothing. We just sat there, breathing.

“She was holding back.” Jackaby finally broke the silence.

“That was holding back?” I panted.

“Less so with you,” he amended. “I don’t think she likes you very much.”

“I did put onions in her pie.”

“She was holding back against me. She had a clean shot there, in the end, but she let me climb through after you before she took it.”

“Why would she be holding back?”

“Pavel said he wasn’t allowed to kill me. He said they needed me. Needed my eyes.”

“Well, let’s try to keep those in your head, shall we?”

I leaned back against the bench. The church was spinning slightly around me. I felt another shudder, like a faint earthquake.

“The whole fabric of the veil is strained in this church,” Jackaby said. “The coherence charm is the only thing holding Hafgan’s keep together. I don’t imagine this parish can boast the same.”

We sat there, gazing up at the stained glass apostles, catching our breath. It felt very much like we were sitting in the eye of a storm.

“Hm,” I said. “That’s funny.”

“What’s funny?”

“The apostles.”

“Typically known for having been chummy with the Messiah and then dying torturous martyr’s deaths,” said Jackaby. “Hilarious.”

“Not that sort of funny. There are only eleven of them here,” I said.

“Well, we did make a rather dramatic entrance through the twelfth,” said Jackaby.

“No, we came in via the Virgin Mary,” I said.

“Oh. Perhaps they left Judas out,” he said. “Traitor and all that.”

“No, he’s there, on the end,” I said. Indeed, the duplicitous disciple was looking rather ashamed of himself, a stream of silver coins pouring from the pouch in his left hand. “And there’s John with the chalice and snake. Matthew the tax collector. That one’s Peter, there. Which one is missing?”

“Not really our chief concern, just at the moment.” Jackaby sighed. He pushed himself up from the pew. “What we need to do now is find our way back to the sub-basement and through the original rend that Pavel showed us. That new one won’t do us much good, unless you’ve sprouted wings.” He paused. “Which, come to think of it, is exactly what Douglas did on the day that he visited this church.”

I continued gazing up at the windows. Something was off about them, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. I tried hard to remember my Sunday school lessons with old Vicar Peebles.

“That one must be Jude,” I said to myself. Jackaby had already gone to poke his head into the rectory at the far end of the church. “And there’s James the Elder and James the Younger. Andrew. Bartholomew. That has to be Thomas with the spears, and Philip with the basket. Who’s missing? Paul?”