Some instinct must have saved him at the last second for he twisted to the side and the sword thrust that was intended to skewer him in the chest merely pierced his abdominal area instead. He screamed in pain and reflexively pulled the trigger of his firearm, sending several shots flying down the length of the pew.

While keeping the pressure on the man’s wrist, Annja drew back her sword-bearing arm and, with an adrenaline-fueled thrust, drove the hilt into his chin. The force caused his eyes to roll back in his head and sent him into unconsciousness.

Her opponent might be out of the fight, but the damage had been done. When she poked her head up to get a sense of where the rest of the intruders were, bullets thundered into the wood of the pews around her and she felt a sting of pain as a long sliver of hardwood was blown free and slashed across the side of her cheek. Her quick look had shown her several dark forms making their way down either side of the nave in an effort to box her in.

She couldn’t stay put.

Not if she wanted to live.

She scrambled over the unconscious body of her opponent and then crab-walked down the length of the pew to the other end. From there she looked out over the presbytery, hunting for a way out.

She had a good view of the altar, as well as the rest of the presbytery space behind it. Chapels lined the rounded rear wall, small alcoves with a statue of some saint or another and a kneeler, sometimes two kneelers, in them. Nothing that looked at all promising as an escape route.

She was about to start looking elsewhere when she saw it.

Between the sixth and the seventh chapels, roughly straight back from the altar as seen from the front of the church, was a door.

It was deftly designed, the undecorated surface of the door blending in with the rest of the dark wood that made up the rear wall, and if the light hadn’t reflected off the narrow metal of the sunken handle she might never have seen it.

Where it led, she had no idea.

But anywhere’s preferable to here at the moment, she thought.

Of course, getting there was going to be a bit of a challenge. She would have to expose herself to gunfire from several sources as she dashed up the platform, past the altar and over to the door. If she got there and found the door locked she would be in real trouble.

Of course, if she stayed and did nothing, she’d only be making things easy for them. It wouldn’t take them long to surround her and, when they did, it would be like fish in a barrel.

She had no other options.

Annja mapped out the route in her mind, doing what she could to prepare herself for what was to come, and then counted it down in her head.

One…

Two…

On three, she lunged to her feet and ran.

Her sudden movement must have taken her pursuers by surprise, for she made it up the platform and halfway to the altar before she heard a shout from the somewhere behind her and the gunfire started once more.

The cacophony was deafening, as the acoustics of the cathedral sent the echoes of each gunshot bounding around the interior, filling the space with thunderous applause of a murderous kind. As she flung herself behind the thick protection of the rectangular marble altar in the center of the platform, several bullets whistled past close enough for her to feel the heat of their passage.

No sooner had she reached the safety of the altar than she was scrambling and charging forward again, except this time she had the bulk of the altar between her and her attackers. A hail of bullets slammed into the marble while she scrambled on hands and knees over to the door she’d seen from the other side of the room.

She grabbed the door’s handle and pulled it open, revealing a set of spiral steps leading upward. Choir loft, she thought, though there was no way of knowing for sure. Wherever they led, she’d deal with it. Right now she just wanted to get out of the line of fire!

As if to punctuate her argument, bullets slammed into the door beside her.

Annja dashed up the stairs.

She’d guessed correctly and emerged into the choir loft. What she hadn’t known was that the loft was accessible from the opposite end of the church through the use of two wide walkways and a staircase at the front of the church. As she came up level with the choir loft, several shots ricocheted off the staircase around her, fired by the gunmen running down the walkways in her direction.

With nowhere else to go, Annja continued up the winding staircase, hoping against hope that somewhere above her was a way out.

She emerged into the cupola of the bell tower, an octagonal-shaped room with large arches open to the elements on each side. Beneath her, the staircase rang with the sound of booted feet and the thrumming of the railing under her hands let her know that the gunmen were in hot pursuit. She had only seconds to act before they caught up with her.

With the gunman on her heels and nowhere else to go, Annja took the only course of action available to her. She rushed across the room, clambered through one of the open arches and stepped out onto the roof. A gunshot rang out as she did so, the bullet slamming into the edge of the archway by her left hand, but she knew better than to look back.

The roof stretched out ahead of her, but she could already see several other intruders climbing onto it from the access ladders on the other wing and were she to head in that direction she’d quickly find herself trapped between two groups of gunmen.

A glance in the other direction showed her the edge of the rooftop only a few yards away, overlooking a long drop to the thundering river below.

Footsteps on the ladder told her she had only seconds to make up her mind.

She turned and ran.

The gunmen continued shooting at her, perhaps divining her intent, but she ignored them as best she could, thrusting downward with her legs, pushing for every ounce of speed she could get.

It was going to be close….

As bullets filled the air around her, Annja raced toward the edge of the rooftop and flung herself out into space.

13

The fall was a good couple of hundred feet and Annja knew that in order to survive it she was going to have to control how she entered the water. Crisp and clean was the order of the day. If she was even the slightest bit off center, she’d bounce off the surface just as if it were fashioned of six feet of solid cement.

Her arms and legs pinwheeled for a moment and then gravity took over, hauling her downward. The fall might feel like it was taking forever, but Annja knew she had only a few seconds in which to prepare herself for the impact at the bottom. She brought the image of her sword to mind and did her best to emulate its long, sleek form with her own body, tucking her arms flat against her sides and squeezing her legs together tightly, her toes pointed. From somewhere in the distance came a shout and the echo of a gunshot, but she didn’t have time to think about either right now. She tucked her chin against her chest and hoped for the best.

The collision, when it came, was everything she expected it to be, a bone-jarring crash into the surface of the water followed by a swift plunge toward the bottom. She had no idea how deep the water was and found herself praying that she didn’t run out of room before she bled off all that downward momentum she’d picked up from the drop.

Thankfully, the river was deep and she felt herself slowing down before she struck the bottom. This presented her with a new set of difficulties, however, for no sooner had her downward momentum slowed that she felt the tug of the current trying to pull her along in its wake. Realizing the danger she was in, she began clawing her way toward the surface, driving herself upward with powerful kicks of her long legs.