Especially, he realized with mounting dread, one that had been allowed this plain view of humanity’s most ancient foe?
Obscured now by a light veil of gray rain, the creature was appraising him as if he were simply the next niggling detail that needed to be dealt with.
“Not that we are not grateful,” it said, rising from its seat and stepping toward him. “We could not have done it without you.”
Einstein reared away, but where was there to go other than over the side? Even if he could swim, he’d never make it to shore in these turbulent waters. Still, he was ready to take his chances in the lake — what other choice did he have? — when he heard a voice shouting behind him.
“Duck, Professor! Duck!” A dripping oar suddenly snagged the rope of the sail and yanked it backward over his head.
Something thudded up against the stern of the boat, and when he dared to turn around, he saw Lucas holding a wet paddle and pulling hard on the line while teetering on a rocking canoe.
A moment later, just as the canoe flipped over, Lucas leapt into the sailboat, falling against Einstein so hard that he was knocked off his seat. Before his wet hands could secure a grip on the tiller or anything else, the professor tumbled overboard, arms flailing and legs buckling, into the frigid waters of the lake.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Crashing onto the deck, the paddle still entangled in the lines, Lucas scrabbled for a hold on Einstein’s pants, but it was too late to catch him. And when he looked up, he saw Patrick Delaney standing, legs spread, in the pouring rain. In his hands, he held the saint’s crook.
“Patrick!” Lucas shouted. “What are you doing?” Einstein was fast receding in the wake of the boat. “We’ve got to turn around before he drowns!”
But Delaney — or what was now passing for him — didn’t move.
“A life jacket! Is there a life jacket?” Lucas looked all around the cramped shell. Underneath the corner of a canvas tarp, he saw faded yellow fabric. He scrambled on all fours toward it, yanked the life preserver free, and then bringing his arm back, slung it as far off the stern as he could. It sailed a couple of dozen feet, trailing a long rope, then plopped onto the water, well short of where Lucas could see the professor’s white head bobbing in the waves.
The only thing he could do now would be to jump in after him, and then try to ferry them both to shore. It wouldn’t be easy. He kicked off his shoes to rid himself of the excess weight, but just as he prepared to dive into the lake, he felt an iron hook wrap itself around his neck and drag him down into the boat. He landed hard on his back, his head thumping against a wooden thwart, and before he could gather his senses, a heavy boot pressed down on his chest.
Delaney stood above him, like a conquistador planting a flag on some new territory.
“What are you doing? Patrick, you’ve got to help me!” But even as he was appealing to his old friend, he knew it was a futile cause. Although the face was Delaney’s, as were the body and the clothes, it was something else entirely that he was addressing — something ancient and implacable and evil, something that had suppressed any shred of Patrick Delaney.
And it didn’t care a whit if Einstein drowned.
Lucas grabbed hold of the creature’s foot and pried it away from his chest, rolling to one side. He felt the boot kick him in his ribs, knocking the breath out of him, and then kick him again. When he tried to get up on all fours, the staff came cracking down on his shoulders with such astonishing force he was surprised it didn’t break in two. Or that he didn’t.
With each passing second, the possibility of the professor surviving in the stormy waters was diminishing.
Delaney lifted the staff to deal another blow, but stopped for an instant, suddenly fixated on something dangling free from Lucas’s bowed neck.
The medallion Simone had given him.
It was just enough of a reprieve for Lucas to scuttle toward the bow, his shoulders aching and skull throbbing.
But it was no more than that. His enemy snorted, and then tried to squirm around the sail, which was swinging wildly, back and forth across the boat. Lucas snapped the leather cord from his neck and held the ancient pentagram out in front of him. He had no idea what power it might possess, but he was fast running out of options. He shook it defiantly, but any protection he had hoped it could afford was dispensed of with the next swipe of the staff. The medallion was knocked loose and flew off into the lake where all of the other artifacts had disappeared.
A clap of thunder, loud as a cannon volley, rumbled across the sky, and the rain came down in a torrent.
“Stop!” Lucas shouted. He knew that at least one of his fingers had just been broken. “Can’t you hear me? Patrick, I know you’re in there!”
For one fleeting instant, he thought he saw, like a murky image staring up from the bottom of a pond, the actual face of his old comrade, a beseeching look in his bewildered eyes.
“I can see you there! Patrick, come back!”
Then the image was gone, like a slate wiped clean with a wet cloth, and Lucas was once again confronting nothing but an enemy bent on his destruction. In his head, he heard a voice, as if transmitted by a radio wave, gloating, “He’s not here anymore.” It wasn’t even Delaney’s voice. “And you, you should have died in that iron mine.”
Suddenly it was all before him again — Hansel reaching for the candy bar, the detonation, the shrapnel mangling Toussaint, killing the boy, and gouging out his own eye. All thoughts but one flew out of his head.
He had to kill it, this damn thing that had possessed Delaney, and he had to kill it now.
The sail whipped back again, and the paddle that had been tangled in the lines fell free, clattering to his feet. Grabbing it, he swung the flat blade at the creature’s head, but the blow was deftly parried by the iron-handled staff. His opponent didn’t even lose his balance in the rocking boat.
Lucas regained his own footing as best he could; the water in the hull was up to his ankles and sloshing back and forth. He pulled the paddle back over his shoulder like a baseball bat and swung again, this time with every ounce of strength that he could still muster. The paddle cracked against the petrified wood of the staff and splintered, a wide fissure running down its length and sending a shudder all the way up Lucas’s arms.
Lightning shimmered in the sky.
There was only enough of the paddle left for one more strike, and Lucas took it, but this time the shaft snapped in two and the blade went skimming off into the howling wind like a loose propeller. Lucas gripped the upper half, its end jagged as a knife, and lunged with it. The tip speared the fabric of Delaney’s sodden coat and got snared there. Lucas tried to pull it back, but it wouldn’t come, and he watched in horror as the ancient staff, with its crooked iron handle high in the air, rose above Delaney’s head, about to deliver a fatal strike. The moment of imminent action.
Unarmed, battered, barely able to stand, Lucas suddenly remembered what Saint Anthony had done when overwhelmed by the armies of Diocletian — he had raised the staff and called upon the powers of Heaven. Instead of trying to dodge the blow, or escape the boat, Lucas leapt at his adversary, gripping the wooden staff with both hands, and though his face was only inches from the creature’s foul breath, held on tight. He would either die in the next instant, or…
The explosion came in a blinding blue flash, the jagged lightning bolt touching the iron handle like the finger of God. A massive charge scorched the air and hurled Lucas flat against the mast.