Cates yanked me up around the waist and pushed Tammy with his nub, toward the building with Jacob and Fala coming up behind us. We ran in, finding the cats going down a staircase that didn’t look like it would hold their weight, much less ours, but we followed. They took us through a maze of basements, and then upstairs into other buildings and back down again into another basement filled with the homes that used to stand tall above them. They slowed when they came to what looked like a back alley. It was hard to tell with the rubble looking the same at every turn, but the graveyard was nowhere in sight. They hurried to the right and didn’t stop until the buildings became whole and a few lights lit their windows. Luther changed into his human form but his brother remained.

“The church is around the next street. We will wait for you to return but we can go no further.”

“You’re welcome to join us,” I said, as I had to any who helped us and wanted a change in their lives.

“It is forbidden for our kind to go near the sacred church. But, we will help you find your way back out of the forbidden zone when you find what you are looking for,” he replied, and before I could say anything else he shifted back into a cat and he and his brother blended into the shadows of the alley.

“Fala, do you know why they’re not like you?” I asked as Jacob led us out into the street.

“My people were infected by the great grandfather wolf. They were born with the curse in their line,” he replied in a gruff tone, slurring every other word trying to speak with a snout.

“Changing into two legs to them is the change, where becoming a werewolf is the change to Fala,” Cates explained using a low tone.

“That must be the church,” Jacob said, stopping to look up at the steeple towering over the top of the other buildings. “Fala, take your human form.” Then he pulled Fala’s pants from the pack that carried the maps.

Fala shifted and changed in the shadows of the trees that were dwarfed by the buildings that towered them, then stepped out, bare foot and shirtless. I don’t know if I was expecting the church to be like the ones back home, but it was nothing like them. Our white washed, one-story buildings were big enough to hold maybe sixty people. This one stood as high as Inara’s castle, was made of brick and stone and could more than likely hold all the people in our county and several of the neighboring ones to boot.

We jumped the wrought iron fence that circled the back of the church and found a door close to the back that was made of solid wood and what looked like railroad ties. The doorframe and door were arched with a top so high that Cates and Fala would have had a hard time reaching it with up-stretched arms.

The door was locked and wouldn’t budge, so we made our way further around the back, and found a window about six feet off the ground with the same type of iron bars that the fence was made out of covering it. Cates was able to reach up with his one hand and pull, showing that the top of the iron ribs were loose at the top right. Fala got on Cates’ shoulders and pulled the bars free, handing them down to Garvin, being as quiet as he possibly could. He then pushed the window until it slid up enough for him to stand one foot on Cates’ shoulder and slip into the opening. A few moments later, he popped his head around the side of the church and waved for us to come back to the arched door.

“Well done, Fala,” Jacob said, putting a hand on his arm. “Did you sense anyone around?”

“Only the smell of normals. I could not tell if they were close by, because the inside is strong with the smell of old scents as well as new ones,” he explained in a low tone as he followed Jacob back inside.

“This is where Sydney would have come in handy,” I whispered, getting a frown from Jacob and Cates. “Sorry,” I added, shrugging my shoulders.

“One does not need to feel something when they already know the consequences of their actions.” Cates turned back looking in the direction of the way we were headed and got a tongue stuck out at him because Jacob was holding up a hand for us to be quite.

Garvin laid both of his hands on my shoulders and squeezed lightly. I reached up and touched his hand in a ‘thank you’ gesture. Jacob stuck his head around the corner of a room that had a large amount of light coming from it then darted back in just as fast, holding up one finger. He watched until a man left the room and then ran to the other side, waving us over one at a time. I had to stop to witness the enormity of the room. There were enough pews to fill the church with hundreds of parishioners. Statues standing on pedestals were spaced every other pew, with more affixed to the ceiling looking down on those who came to worship. I wanted, more than anything, to see what the pews were facing, but I was yanked out of my adoration by the back of my shirt right before the man in a brown gown that draped to the floor, came back in the large room holding a golden goblet in his hands. I saw from the shadow of the door, him kneeling then walking out of view.

Jacob gave me a stern look, which caused me to give him one back that had just as much glare as he was giving me. Fala and Derek were still on the other side of the room as we waited for the strangely dressed man to leave the area again. That’s when he started speaking in a language that I didn’t understand. Jacob waved his hand for Fala and Derek to go around to the back of the small hall that they were in and move around another way. After we were all together, Jacob moved us further down the hall, and put Cates to watch our backs. Jacob was about to go down a flight of stairs to our right when a voice rang out, “You dare desecrate the house of God?!”

A bald man, dressed just like the younger man that we saw in the large room, ran back out. Jacob grabbed the back of Garvin’s shirt and hurried him through the door. “Move, he’ll be back,” he said in a low voice. Tammy was next, and was past the door frame when the man came running back in with a silver cross with our Lord Jesus Christ on it as if he were just being nailed to the cross and a long silver flask in the other hand. “Our Father who art in Heaven,” he began saying the Lord’s Prayer, pulling the flask back and slinging it toward us. As soon as the contents hit the skin on my arm it started to burn like he had splashed acid on me. “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done.”  Then he raised it back and slung the substance at us a second time. Derek pushed past me, as I pressed my body to the wall, with Jacob trying to push me through the door and down the steps yelling, “run”, but I couldn’t stop watching the man’s actions. Cates and Fala were down and Jacob and I were all that was left. “On earth as it is in Heaven.”

“Give us this day, our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us,” I said, walking right up to the man, who was now backing up from me. “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from every evil. Psalms 23. We mean you no harm, but we do need to use your beautiful church to enter the tunnels to stop those who do wish you harm.”

“You are a damned creature. Take this demon from my sight, Lord God,” he said closing his eyes, praying in the same language that the other man was using, dropping to his knees while clutching the flask close to his chest, and holding the cross out toward me.

“Forgive me,” I said then turned and headed down the stairs with Jacob right behind me.

The wooden staircase that we started out on soon turned into stone steps that began to curve in a winding fashion the deeper we went. It opened up into a room where Cates grabbed a torch hanging in a wall sconce and kept going down another flight of stairs that were much narrower and twice as curved as the last ones that we were on. Once we reached what I thought was the bottom, Jacob slid his flint across the wall and brought the torch to life. He looked back at me with his brows furrowed and stormed up to me so fast that my back hit the wall before I even realized I was moving away from him.