AllFreeNovel
Share Us
It was Sheriff Carter.
They both rushed to the balcony and helped Charlie, bloodied and bruised, pull the screaming woman up to safety.
Charlie collapsed on the floor, and Valerie looked down below, watching as the shadowy figure of Logan Bartlett descended athletically down a pipe and then onto the grounds.
He then disappeared into the grim, oncoming night.
"Charlie," Valerie said, holding back tears looking at her partner's bruised face. His right eye was almost completely swollen shut.
"Did you get him?" Charlie groaned.
"No, he got away," Valerie gasped in the rain.
Thunder loomed above them like a cloak of dread.
"We had him!" Glen Carter said, shaking his head as he tended to the woman who was alive but almost paralyzed by shock.
Will now appeared on the balcony. He looked down at Charlie.
"I saw what you did, Charlie," he said, holding his friend's hand. "There's a thin line between bravery and stupidity."
"Which one was I?" Charlie said, coughing.
"Perhaps both," Will said, wiping blood from Charlie's eye tenderly. "But you saved this lady's life."
"I don't think I could have taken hits like that and held on," Sheriff Carter said. "Remind me never to get into a fight with you, Charlie. I'll call an ambulance." The sheriff held the woman who had been attacked and helped her inside.
"I can get up," Charlie said, and the group helped him. Will under one arm, Valerie under the other.
They sat Charlie on a chair and waited for the ambulances.
"What the hell happened to you both?" Valerie asked. "We tried to contact you."
"When we got here," Will explained, "we were speaking with one of the monks when there was a scream. Someone came up from the cellars and told us there was a body down there, a priest named Jonathan Miller. We went down there and found the poor man, the wordsPost Tenebrus Luxcarved into his skin. We knew the killer was near as the body was still warm, so we explored the basement level. I suppose with all this stone, there was no signal."
"And that's when you found Logan Bartlett?" Valerie asked.
“Yes, and Sheriff Carter and I got separated down there chasing him. When I came up here, I found him attacking his next victim. Then you arrived. And thank God you did. So, Logan, that's his name?" Will asked.
"Yes," said Valerie. "Charlie and I discovered that he's the member of a group that tries to manipulate people with, as they see it, poor faith, to get them out of the Church."
"Remarkable!" Will said. "And so, this Logan is killing people who he thinks aren't fit for the Church?"
"In a word," Valerie said. "But he's killing those who decide to leave because he sees apostasy as the greatest religious crime."
"Hmmm," Will thought out loud. "I wonder if he comes from a family who are anti-religious. That would ..."
Valerie smiled. "Yes. That's what I thought. He's killing people because of the anger he feels towards his own family. Each time he kills a victim from the group, he's symbolically killing his own family's sins."
"Doc, you've got a knife in your arm," Charlie said, slumped in a chair. He pointed to the cast in Will's arm with the knife sticking out of it.
"That's okay," Will said. "It missed my arm, but I'm glad it stuck there, otherwise I would have been a goner. It's almost as if I was fated to encounter Lance Nielsen so that I could survive meeting Logan Bartlett."
"You're not getting religious now, are you Doc?" Charlie asked.
"There are more things in heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in your philosophies," Will said. "You never know."
Sheriff Carter entered the room.
