Sanctuary

Ethan led his small but growing group of stragglers west along the narrow street.  He was still shaken from his encounter with the witch but was feeling better about where he was headed.  It seemed everyone still on their feet had the same idea, they were all headed to the church on Hillsborough.  The demons, though, these creatures, they seemed to have had the same idea.  They were here to kill humans, and so they followed where their pray flocked.

Ethan emerged onto the main road and was assailed by a landscape of carnage fit for Dante.

“Oh my God,” Lilly breathed, “they’re cutting people off.”

The creatures had chased the tide of fleeing people to their sanctuary, then turned and massacred anyone else who came behind.  Everyone else, it appeared to the small band of bone-tired people caught on the wrong side of the line.

“Now what?” Came a panicked question from Stuart, the nervous man in the back of the huddle who’d insisted on introducing himself about a half-dozen times.  “We can’t get through that!”

“Quiet!  Or we’re never even going to get the chance!”  Ethan hissed.  Running his hands over his belt and back pockets, he took a quick inventory of his rapidly diminishing supplies.  Bastard’s right, we’re not fighting our way through that many.  Ethan watched the horde turn slowly toward the church itself, a tall brick building fronted by wide stone steps and stained glass windows behind protective Plexiglass.  There were lights on inside, though most of the streetlamps had been destroyed outside.  The demons hadn’t quite stepped onto the church grounds yet, but now, with nothing but corpses at their feet and any living people wisely hidden, they started to grow restless.  Claws flexed and wings fluttered, teeth ground, and the whole mass began slowly to edge closer.

“If they get inside the church…”

Ethan shook his head, “They won’t.”

“But if?”  Lilly locked Ethan’s right shoulder in a death grip, tugging lightly but continuously back the way they’d come.

And just then, the front doors opened.  Everyone clamped their mouths shut and watched, barely breathing.  A single man who could only have been the pastor stepped out onto the top step, he didn’t flinch when the tall double doors slammed shut behind him.  He looked out in horror, but not for the demons.  His gaze swept over the bodies of easily forty people, torn and broken and cast aside – then he turned that gaze upon the monsters responsible.  Their creeping forward progress halted.

“Stop.” He said calmly, with a force born of pitching a sermon to the back rows.  The word carried easily to all assembled.  Ethen watched the creatures, saw them chuckle darkly, spread sneering smirks across their nightmare faces.  Many of them looked to have stopped merely out of amusement – but not all of them.

“This is the house of the Lord, this is Holy ground.  Your monstrosity is an affront to God and you will come no further,” the preacher said.  His voice never wavered, and though his face showed clearly that he was still horrified, Ethan could feel his conviction.  The man was sickened by what he saw, but not afraid of it.  And right then, Ethen went from hoping to believing.

“Get ready,” he whispered behind him.

“For what?!”

“To run to the church, we’re going to make it.”  Ethan tried to sound as sure as the pastor across the street.  He wasn’t sure he did, but no one challenged him.

The pastor, whose name Ethan would never learn, stood tall.  “This is not your place!” He called out, there was no question he was speaking of more than just Hillsborough Street.  “And these people will not be your victims.  Go, and do not come back.” The pastor’s words were calmly spoken, but they carried to every ear.  A few of the smaller creatures fidgeted, they were all bone and teeth and thorns and they rattled their fists or claws at the lone man who would dare stand in their way.  They did not get any closer, but neither did they retreat.  One by one, smiles began to break out among the horde, dark, glittering rows of sharp teeth beneath curled lips.  For a moment, the pastor seemed to deflate, like he’d thought he could talk them down.  He looked reluctant, almost.  Then he raised an old Bible, one Ethan hadn’t even noticed, and held it in front of him.  His voice virtually crackled with power,

“Then in the name of the Lord, perish.”

For a moment, Ethan thought he’d gone blind.  White light erupted around the preacher and burned away every shadow, every detail, until finally subsiding to reveal an enormous prismatic construct of light, nearly the height of the church.  It stood behind the preacher vibrating with energy like a welding arc.

And then it struck.

The high, clear sound of a trumpet shattered the silence that had fallen around the church.  It filled the street and vibrated a hundred windows in their frames, it shook dust and mortar from brick buildings.  It was beautiful, and it slammed into the frozen demons like a shock wave.  The smaller creatures were blown instantly to cinders and ash.  As the sound continued, strident and unwavering, the larger of the beasts turned and bolted.  Wing tips and claws dissolved like thin metal under a blowtorch, streaming sparks as they clawed at and over one another to escape.  More than half faltered on destroyed limbs and fell to the pavement in charred hunks, burning before the onslaught of light and sound.  Ethan rocked back onto his heels, stunned, but he couldn’t look away and he couldn’t stop listening to the sound.  Hope lept inside him