“Put her on the cross,” said Tatham, breaking his silence. “Else, the world finds out about us and we are all stopped in our efforts, Father.”
Luc Sante solemnly nodded and simply said, 'Take her.”
Jessica put up a struggle, bloodying Tatham's nose, tearing loose, making a run for the direction in which she'd come, but she was roughly brought down when the others tackled her and dragged her back to the altar.
“I am sorry that you are fighting this so, dear Jessica,” said Father Luc Sante. “In a manner of speaking, your whole life has led to this moment, and you should actually relish it, delight in it, for you die here for the greater glory of Jesus Christ and our Lord, and for the greater glory of all mankind, my dear.”
Her lip trembling, Jessica could only pierce the old man with her sudden hatred and contempt for him. “All you stood for, all that nonsense you spouted about creating a psychology of evil, about combadng evil at the source, and who is the greater evil than you, Luc Sante? You have become the thing you despise most.”
“Then perhaps we are two of a kind. Perhaps I will join you after, and in the afterworld, we will continue this debate. But for now…” He jerked his head to one side, indicating that the others now could take her to the cross. 'Tie her and prepare the drug and prepare her for the stakes,” he ordered.
“What about the tongue branding?” asked one of the Houghton sisters, her question sounding like a curse.
“They all had their tongues branded to send them safely over,” agreed the other sister, sounding balmy in the head.
“This one don't belong… isn't a believer!” chided Tatham. “She shouldn't be branded. We're needing to rid ourselves of her, and that's all.”
“But isn't that…”
“Murder!” shouted Jessica.
“Inject her, now!” ordered Luc Sante, tired of the bandying about, not wishing to lose control of his meager following, nearly a sixth of whom had already gone over, willingly, if he could be believed. Jessica had seen the stark evidence of how powerful the cult mentality could be on her cutting room slab, and she recalled the Hale-Bhopp comet aftermath in America some years before.
Jessica saw the slight quiver of glee going through Tatham's body as he plunged home the drug that would sedate her. She tried to pull away, to physically fight them, but there were too many hands holding her, and so she fought mentally to stay sharp. She cursed herself for having come full steam ahead, and for having held so tenaciously to her faith in Luc Sante.
The drug's effect worked on her now, making her drowsy, weak and uncaring, disinterested in her own execution, but she fought, shouting at them, shouting, “This is not a willing crucifixion! This is an execution! Murder! An execu… exe… cue… cue… don.”
And Jessica's system shut down, and somewhere deep in the recesses of her unconscious mind, she knew that she would wake up dying.
Luc Sante brought her around gently, his voice breaking through the pillow clouds of her deep slumber. A throbbing pain pulsed at the back of her head, and she felt a dampness there where blood had soaked her hair. She heard Luc Sante's words as in a dream, the drug dizzying her. “This is how we intend to combat evil in the universe, my dear Jessica. First, we will annihilate it on this ground, on this holy cross.” While she could not see, could not focus her dilated eyes, she imagined his bony finger pointing to the enormous and ancient cross where Strand still hung in the throes of mortal pain.
Strand 's labored breathing made her wonder how long the man had been hanging here, hours, a day, more? Jessica kept her eyelids closed, struggling with how she might locate and take control of the. 38 or her Browning automatic. Then she realized that Strand's labored breathing was not Strand's but her own gasping breath. She hadn't yet been staked to the cross, but she had been drugged.
She heard Luc Sante continue for his rag-tag army of followers, all of whom were in awe of the old man with the wild eyes and unruly shock of white hair. “Place her on the cross. Do it. Do it now.”
Jessica struggled to her feet, lashing out with fists clenched at men in heavy robes and dark hoods, but two strong men grabbed her before she could get her bearings, stripping her to her bra and panties, discarding her clothing, some of it cast into the stagnant, standing water as they raped her of her identity. She now represented an object, a mere symbol, an obstacle to their continued obsession, an icon to religious fanaticism.
They dragged her, kicking and screaming, to the cross. Luc Sante's followers looked on as if in rapture. Luc Sante shouted, “Dr. Coran will now take the place of Christ.”
“What about increasing the drug?” suggested one of them, the voice strikingly clinical and familiar, she thought. But Jessica had enough trouble focusing on the fact they had drugged her to worry about the familiar voice.
Luc Sante solemnly replied to the one man who stood up against him, “This time, no high dosages.”
“But she must be willing, like the others were,” countered another follower whose cowl masked his likeness. Jessica could not be sure of her sense of sight or sound as the Brevital continued to work havoc with her brain.
Still somewhere in her mind, Jessica held on to the fact that all of Luc Sante's victims had been, as the old man himself had admitted to her earlier, willing participants in their own crucifixion deaths. She must use this fact against him here and now. It proved the one truth from Luc Sante's mouth irrefutable, and if so, perhaps his followers might question her being forced and man-handled into this role.
Jessica fought to focus on the once empty chamber now filled with people of all sizes, shapes-all below heavy cossack-styled robes and deep hoods, cowls holding their features hostage in shadow. Colorless and of one mind, she thought.
Her own mind multiplied… multiplied the crowd before her even as it spun out of control. She saw all Father Luc Sante's converts closing in around her, all wishing to touch the icon before it departed; before being sent over to the other side. Now in the crowd, she saw the visage of Chief Inspector Boulte which made her gasp with a moment's hope, until she saw J. T.'s image as well, followed by Santiva, Donna LeMonte, Kim Desinor, James Parry, Stuart Copperwaite, and there, too, stood Richard Sharpe-dear Richard-all of them fooled by Luc Sante. All of them were pleading for the man to “take me next, take me next…”
“All the others volunteered!” Jessica shouted.
Some grumblings of response came from the crowd as Luc Sante assured them that Jessica had volunteered, even if unconsciously so.
“You sisters, you Houghton sisters!” Jessica shouted. “It's your turn. You've waited years upon years for this day.”
“She's right, Father,” said one of the Houghton twins in response.
Luc Sante's stentorian voice silenced them all with a shouting sermon. “A child came to me in a dream,” Luc Sante told his followers now, “and in this vision, the child-neither male nor female-told me what to do. And this is that prophetic dream come true. Now we all know that dreams are the word of God incarnate, so to ignore the child's voice is to ignore the voice of God Himself.”
'Tell us more of this dream,” asked one follower who dropped his cowl, disclosing his face to Jessica, who believed her mind fevered on seeing Dr. Karl Schuller staring at her.
Luc Sante continued, pleased at this reaction. “I've concluded that she… Dr. Coran… must feel the pain as Christ Himself felt the pain to truly atone for her sins of which she has many, and in order for the subsequent resurrection to take place. You will see the resurrection of the child of God, Jesus Himself in due time! You will all be witness to the miracle of miracles re bom, returned to this Earth… and to this end, no more chugs.”