He gestured for Ryan and Krysty to stand against the far wall of the cellar while he laid several probes and pokers in the braziers to grow hot.
“Suffering is pleasure and pleasure is suffering,” the fat monk muttered, still keeping the Winchester scattergun aimed at his two prisoners.
It was obvious to Ryan that the priest intended to chain them, then torture them both to death. This was as inexorable as the sun rising in the east and setting in the far west. It meant that the moment was coming like a runaway train when some sort of move would have to be made, go up against the menace of the shotgun, whatever the outcome.
It was the most slender of chances, but it was a whole lot better than no chance at all.
He knew that Krysty would be thinking exactly the same, but there was no way of communicating with each other, no plan to be hatched.
At the back of his mind was the desperate idea of making a suicidal attack and hope that Sandor fired both of the barrels, giving Krysty a good chance of making a break for safety, then bringing J.B., Jak and the others back with her to avenge his own death.
Even at that dark moment, Ryan grinned wolfishly to himself, amused by his own shadowed plan of dying.
If the monk had been holding a handblaster, there would have been a goodish chance that he might miss. Ryan remembered seeing a nervous bounty hunter in a clothing store in a nameless ville in Pennsylvania fire eight shots from a Ruger P-85 at a dodging killer. All of them were at a range of less than ten feet, and every single bullet missed the target.
That wasn’t going to happen at that range with a 20-gauge scattergun.
Father Sandor was breathing heavily with his own bustling exertion, readying himself for hours of sheer delight. His voice had become high and thin, like a eunuch’s, with his own sick arousal.
“Now,” he said, “thee can strip thy bubonic bodies naked and then chain thyselves to the walls. And we shall commence the service.”
The instruments of torture in the hot coals were already beginning to glow cherry red.
“The scum of my parish will be so happy when they hear that I have consecrated a pair of strangers in the church. They will be happy because they will know that they will be spared for a short while.” Sandor giggled. “But it will be a very short while.”
Ryan hadn’t moved, leaning on his clumsy walking stick, clinging to each passing second. Mildred and the Armorer hadn’t been all that far away from the little church, and there was always a remote chance that they might come along and save the day. It was a small hope.
“Clothes off,” Sandor snapped.
“Please,” Krysty said.
“The time for begging will come later,” he replied. “When the blood flows and salt fills your eyes and mouth, and your flesh is scorched and you crave butter for the smarting. But there is no butter here in Hell!”
“Just let her go and keep me,” Ryan said, going along with time-buying.
Sandor grinned so widely his whole face became a huge creased smile. “I have two pets for my collection. Why, outlander filth, should I give either of you up?”
The shotgun barrels were about eight feet away from the two prisoners.
Too far.
Krysty took a step toward the priest, her hands spread for mercy. “Please,” she said again.
Instinctively Sandor took a similar step back from her, gesturing with the big shotgun for her to stay where she was. But his movement had made him bump into the dangling corpse. The chains rattled noisily, and the eyeless skull slumped suddenly down onto the burned chest with a strange clicking sound.
In the atmosphere of bizarrely heightened tension, the monk jumped with shock, head turning to stare at the bobbing body, the Winchester scattergun swinging away from Ryan and Krysty for a moment.
How do you measure a moment when your entire life hangs in the balance?
Half a second?
A single beat of the human heart?