• LA IGLESIA DENTRODE LA MONTAÑA,

THE CHURCH WITHIN THE MOUNTAIN. 8:20 P.M.

Demi walked alongside the line of sixty monks, photographing them as they left the candlelit caverns and entered the church, walking single file, heads bowed, chanting as they went. She used the Canon digital first and then switched to the 35mm Nikon, then back to the Canon, the smart phone concealed beneath the long scarlet dress Cristina had brought her, secretly transmitting the Canon's images to her Web site in Paris.

The monks' collective song echoed off the temple's stone surfaces like a delicate prayer, its single melodic line rising and then slowly falling only to rise once more. At first Demi thought the chant, like the family names on the great stones above the burial vaults on the church floor, was in Italian but it wasn't. Nor was it Spanish. Instead it was sung in a language she had never before heard.

The monks circled the church once and then again and then left, passing through a high portal to an ancient stone amphitheater outside. There the verse was repeated twice more and then twice again as they formed a semicircle in the light of three bonfires that burned in a triangle on the outside edges of a massive circular stone. A stone that was the amphitheatre's centerpiece and had carved at its midpoint the balled cross of Aldebaran.

Demi moved guardedly to a place across from the bonfires, near the amphitheater's seating area where there were easily two hundred spectators-men, women, children-the very old to infants held in their mother's arms. All were dressed in the same long scarlet gown Demi wore.

Beyond the bonfires she could see the valley she had passed through on the way there and where the thin ground fog of earlier in the day had now grown heavy, rising up like sea mist and beginning to swirl in around them. Above everything rose the high mountain peaks, which served to isolate the church and over which a full moon slowly ascended above darkening clouds.

Suddenly the monks' chant stopped and for a long moment there was silence. Then a powerful male voice rose from the dark behind them. Deep and melodic, it sounded as if it were some kind of pagan calling, a brief prayer to the spirits spoken in the same language as the monks.

Immediately the spectators responded as if a chorus, repeating in unison whatever had been said.

The voice came as before, carrying out from the darkness. Then a hooded, black-robed figure stepped into the light of the bonfires and moved to the center of the stone circle. Instantly the figure raised its arms and threw back its head. Demi felt the breath go out of her. It was Reverend Beck, the first time she'd seen him since they'd arrived. Immediately she stepped away from the congregation and into the shadows. Cameras up, she began photographing deliberately: Beck, the congregation, the monks, using one camera and then the other as she had before.

Head thrown back, arms held high above his head, Beck thundered a command to the heavens as if he were reaching to the moon and beyond to call spirits forth from the night. Immediately he turned to the darkness between the bonfires. Again he raised his arms and spoke the same command he had just thrown toward the sky. For a long moment nothing happened and then a vision in white slowly appeared from the dark, moving past the bonfires into the circle.

Cristina.

Beck turned toward the congregation and spoke again, his right arm extended, making a sweep of the stone's great circle. The congregation responded. Repeating what he had said and then adding words that Demi could describe only as sounding like the names of distant stars. There were four in all, spoken quickly and in staccato as if they were calling forth gods.

Cameras firing, Demi inched closer.

Now Beck stepped out of the firelight. In his place, so quickly it almost seemed like a magical trick, Luciana appeared. Her robe was bright gold and in her hand she carried a long, ruby wand. Her rich black hair was pulled back in a tight bun. Equally dark eye makeup was accentuated by theatrical streaks that ran dagger-like from the corners of her eyes to the hollows of her ears, while hideously long nails, eleven inches easily, were fixed to the tips of her fingers.

In a move as graceful as a ballerina's, she stepped behind Cristina and drew a circle in the air above her head with the wand. Then, with the same suppleness, she stepped away to pass the wand around the great circle of stone. Done, she looked to the congregation. Her bearing and manner that of the high priestess, the sacerdotessa, she was. Abruptly she called out a phrase filled with power and certainty, as if she had just cast a spell. Then she stepped forward to the circle's edge, her eyes moving fiercely across the congregation and called out the certainty once more.

And then again.

And then again.

• 8:47 P.M.

Listen!" Marten said and stopped, the axe-handle torch burned short and now little more than a flicker in the pitch black of the tunnel.

"What is it?" The president stopped too.

"Don't know. Sounded like it came from behind us."

They listened intently, but there was nothing.

"Maybe I'm crazy-" Marten said at the silence, then: "There. Hear it?"

From somewhere behind them came a distant high-pitched screeching. It went on for maybe twenty seconds, stopped, then started again.

"Drilling," the president said quickly, "through stone. I've cut enough wells to know the sound."

"Your 'rescuers' have arrived. They know we're here."

"No, they think we're here. But they're still behind us. A mile, more if we're lucky." Instantly the president's eyes found Marten's. "Once they cut into the tunnel they'll drop in listening equipment, maybe night-vision cameras. Sound carries through these shafts almost as sharply as it would under water."

"How many do you think there are?"

"Up there, coming after us?"

"Yes."

"Too many. From here on not a word above a whisper. And whatever that word is, make it damn short."

Marten stared at him for the briefest moment, then turned the torch forward and they moved on.

• 8:50 P.M.

The expanse of rock they were crossing was black as midnight. Miguel stopped and swung his flashlight behind him, lighting the way for a lagging Hap Daniels to catch up.

"Careful with that damn light, you can see it for miles," Hap rasped as he came forward. By now he was cradling his left arm in a sling fashioned from his necktie to help ease the strain on his shoulder.

Behind them a full moon struggled through thickening clouds descending over the distant mountaintops. Rain was coming and they knew it. When it would arrive, how heavy it would be, and how much time they had before it reached them were unanswerable questions.

"You sure you want to keep on?" Miguel was watching Hap as he moved close. It was obvious he was struggling and in pain.

"Yes, dammit."

"You want to rest for a minute? Take the pain pills?"

"Where the hell are the guys?"

"Here!" Amado's voice popped from the dark a dozen yards in front of them. Instantly Miguel swung his flashlight toward a rocky precipice twenty feet away.

"Jesus God!" Hap grabbed Miguel's arm with his good hand, "turn that thing off!"

• 8:52 P.M.

Hap and Miguel peered into a fissure in the rocks below. Ten feet down Hector and José huddled around a large fracture in the stone, their flashlights illuminating the way for Amado as he climbed down into it. A second later he disappeared from sight. Immediately José followed.

"How far does it go?" Miguel asked just loud enough to be heard.

"Maybe thirty feet more," Amado answered from below.