All of the monks she’d seen inside the monastery had been wearing hand-woven sandals.

She slammed on the brakes, skidding to a stop. Fortunately, there was no one behind her. As soon as the car had stopped moving forward, she spun the wheel and stomped on the gas pedal, practically sending her little borrowed car into convulsions as the tires spun and she took off back in the direction she’d just come from.

A terrible feeling unfurled in her gut, a sense that some invisible line had been crossed and that she was already too late to stop whatever it was from happening. She quickly found herself urging the car to go faster as she raced up the mountain road at dangerous speeds.

12

Annja rounded the final curve and the sprawling towers of the monastery came into view, the brick blooming in the sunshine. For a moment she thought she’d been mistaken, that her concerns had all been for nothing, but then she saw the smoke billowing out of one of the upper-story windows and knew that she’d been horribly, terribly right.

She drove through the still-open gates, skidded to a stop in the middle of the circular drive and was up and out of the car before the engine had even stopped idling. As she rushed up the steps she willed her sword into existence. Its familiar weight was a reassuring presence as her hand closed around its hilt.

One glance was all it took to know that the man in front of her was dead. The bullet hole in his forehead stood out starkly against his pale flesh, but did little to hide his features and it was easy for her to recognize him as Brother Samuel.

Someone was going to pay for this, she vowed.

She slipped inside the door and stood in the hallway Samuel had led her through a short time earlier. The office doors on either side of the hall were standing open but as she made her way down its length, cautiously glancing inside each room as she passed, she found that all the rooms were empty.

The door at the far end of the corridor was closed but not latched, so she used the fingers of one hand to ease it open slightly. From where she stood Annja could see part of the cloister and a stretch of the covered walkway that ran perpendicular to her position. The body of another monk lay sprawled across the stone pavement, a dark stain spreading beneath him.

A gunshot rang out, breaking the oppressive silence that lay over the place like a funeral shroud, and Annja jumped at the sound. It was very close. Just beyond the door, in fact, in the section of the cloister she couldn’t yet see.

She gave a push with her hand and sent the door gliding open on well-oiled hinges, revealing the scene in the open space of the cloister just beyond.

A monk in the now-familiar brown robe and sandals was dragging himself on his stomach across the green grass, leaving a trail of bright red blood in his wake from the bullet wound in his leg. Behind him stalked another, similarly dressed individual, but this one was wearing combat boots instead of sandals and carried a 9 mm automatic pistol in his hand. Even as Annja watched, the second man sighted along the length of his arm and shot the wounded monk in the other leg.

Blood sprayed.

The monk screamed in pain.

The intruder threw back his head and laughed.

That was enough for Annja. Without a second thought for her own welfare, she sprinted from the doorway, leaped through the nearest arcade and charged the gunman.

The monk on the ground saw her first, his eyes growing wide at the sight of her charging forward, sword held high, and the fear in his face alerted his tormentor that there was something wrong. The other man twisted around, the muzzle of his gun coming up as he tried to line up a shot even before he knew what his target would be.

Annja wasn’t taking any chances. The first swing of her sword slashed his arm just below the elbow, his gun flying free as his arm hung uselessly. Annja used her momentum to spin around and her second strike caught the intruder at the collarbone and drove diagonally down through his neck.

He was dead before he even had the chance to make a sound.

Unfortunately, so, too, was his victim. As Annja knelt down to help the injured monk she found him staring up at her with unseeing eyes. The second bullet must have found the femoral artery, for there was a rapidly expanding pool of blood in the grass around his legs that hadn’t been there moments before.

She reached out and closed the dead monk’s eyes, vowing as she did so not to let any more of his brethren suffer the same fate.

Noise from one side caught her attention. She turned to see several men emerge from the door to the chapterhouse on the far side of the cloister, dragging the abbott between them. To her dismay, one of them looked up and saw her crouched there over the body.

“Hey!” he shouted.

Annja didn’t hang around to hear what he said next. A glance at the entrance to the church a few feet away showed the massive oak doors propped open with what looked to be stacks of hymnals and Annja slipped inside, saying a silent thank-you to whatever enterprising monk had decided a little fresh air might do the old worship center some good as she did.

She stood still for a moment, letting her eyes adjust to the dimness and trying to get her bearings. The cathedral, she knew, was shaped like a cross lying on its side. The main section of the church ran east to west and the door she’d entered through put her halfway along the length of the nave. The presbytery containing the altar, as well as the north and south transepts that formed the crossbeam of the cross, were to her right.

She had no doubt the gunmen would follow her, so she quickly ran across the center aisle of the church and hid among the pews of the north transept. From there she could keep an eye on the door and still have room to maneuver if need be. She released her sword into the otherwhere, not wanting to have to worry about it sticking up and giving her away.

Annja had just knelt behind the corner of a pew when three men entered the cathedral through the same doors she had used, guns in hand. The leader glanced around, then sent each of his men along the outer edge of the church while he advanced down the center aisle.

Since the intruders were still dressed in the brown habits they had used to infiltrate the complex, she couldn’t tell anything about them. There were no identifying marks on their clothing, nor did she recognize any of the men, from what little she’d seen of their faces. With what she’d discovered so far, which was practically nothing, she was going to be little use in helping the authorities catch those in charge of masterminding the massacre.

The leader of the gunmen shouted to the others in French, directing them to move in on the far end of the church.

That, of course, would bring them right down on her position. She needed to get out of there and find a way to take one of the gunmen captive. If she could do that, she could get the information she needed about who they were and what they were after. She would then figure out what to do from there.

Annja turned and scurried down the length of the row, staying in a crouch to keep her head from showing above the backs of the pews. Her intent was to sneak around behind the advancing gunmen and use the opportunity to slip back out the door she’d entered.

Unfortunately, fate had other ideas.

She reached the end of the row and stuck her head around the corner, only to discover one of the gunmen coming from the opposite direction, intent on sneaking up on her in a similar fashion.

They saw each other at the exact same moment, but Annja was a split second faster in her response. She swept her hand out and to the side, pinning her opponent’s gun hand against the back of the pew. At the same time she thrust her other hand forward, summoning her sword in the process, intent on running her opponent through.