The windows vibrated, and the building shook in the grip of a sudden,
tremendous wind. A score of books flew off the shelves and crashed to
the floor.
“We have evil spirits with us, as well,” Hampton said.
In addition to the pleasant fragrances that filled the room, a new odor
assaulted Jack. It was the stench of corruption, rot, decay, death.
The goblins had descended all but the last two of the cathedral steps.
They were within only a dozen feet of Rebecca.
She turned and bolted away from them.
They shrieked with what might have been anger or glee or both-or
neither. A cold, alien cry.
Without looking back, she knew they were coming after her.
She ran along the sidewalk, the cathedral at her right side, heading
toward the corner, as if she intended to flee to the next block, but
that was only a ruse. After she’d gone ten yards, she made a sharp
right turn, toward the cathedral, and mounted the steps in a snowkicking
frenzy.
The goblins squealed.
She was halfway up the steps when the lizard-thing snared her left leg
and sank claws through her jeans, into her right calf. The pain was
excruciating. -She screamed, stumbled, fell on the steps. But she
continued upward, crawling on her belly, with the lizard hanging on her
leg.
The cat-thing leaped onto her back. Clawed at her heavy coat. Moved
quickly to her neck. Tried to nip her throat. It soothly a mouthful of
coat collar and knitted scarf.
She was at the top of the steps.
Whimpering, she grabbed the cat-thing and tore it loose.
It bit her hand.
She pitched it away.
The lizard was still on her leg. It bit her thigh a couple of inches
above her knee.
She reached down, clutched it, was bitten on the other hand. But she
ripped the lizard loose and pitched it down the steps.
Eyes shining silver-white, the cat-form goblin was already coming back
at her, squalling, a windmill of teeth and claws.
Energized by desperation, Rebecca gripped the brass handrail and lurched
to her feet in time to kick out at the cat. Fortunately, the kick
connected solidly, and the goblin tumbled end over end through the snow.
The lizard rushed toward her again.
There was no end to it. She couldn’t possibly keep both of them at bay.
She was tired, weak, dizzy, and wracked with pain from her wounds.
She turned and, trying hard to ignore the pain that flashed like an
electric current through her leg, she flung herself toward the door
through which Penny and Davey had entered the cathedral.
The lizard-thing caught the bottom of her coat, climbed up, around her
side, onto the front of the coat, clearly intending to go for her face
this time.
The catlike goblin was back, too, grabbing at her foot, squirming up her
leg.
She reached the door, put her back to it.
She was at the end of her resources, heaving each breath in and out as
if it were an iron ingot.
This close to the cathedral, right up against the wall of it, the
goblins became sluggish, as she had hoped they would, just as they had
done when pursuing Penny and Davey. The-lizard, its claws hooked in the
front of her coat, let go with one deformed hand and swiped at her face.
But the creature was no longer too fast for her.
She jerked her head back in time and felt the claws trace only light
scratches on the underside of her chin. She was able to pull the lizard
off without being bitten; she threw it as hard as she could, out toward
the street.
She pried the cat-thing off her leg, too, and pitched it away from her.
Turning quickly, she yanked open the door, slipped inside St. Patrick’s
Cathedral, and pushed the door shut after her.
The goblins thumped against the other side of it, once, and then were
silent.
She was safe. Amazingly, thankfully safe.
She limped away from the door, out of the dimly lighted vestibule in
which she found herself, past the marble holy water fonts, into the
vast, vaulted, massively-columned nave with its rows and rows of