And the killing rage overwhelmed him.
He batted aside the flailing shotgun, sending it spinning into the shadows, where it clattered against a crudely built rack. He brought his elbow around in a cracking blow against the side of Sandor’s face, making the fat man gasp.
“You’re fuckin’ dead,” he panted, straddling the monk, raining blows on the upturned face, breaking the nose into a bloodied pulp, closing both eyes. The priest coughed and spluttered, spitting out shards of broken teeth through his cut lip, mouth sagging open as be fought for breath.
Ryan’s sole desire was to end it and end it quickly and brutally.
Sandor was semiconscious, breathing noisily, blood bubbling from his shattered mouth. Ryan glanced quickly around, seeing that Krysty was struggling to sit up, rubbing the side of her head.
He was aware of the scorching heat from the iron brazier at his side, with the wooden handles of the torture instruments, mostly wrapped in steaming wet rags.
Ryan grabbed at the nearest, seeing that it was a straight iron poker with a twisted end, like a corkscrew. The tip glowed almost white hot. The handle, despite the protective rags, was almost too hot to hold.
Sandor blinked open his puffed eyes, shaking his shaved head as if he couldn’t recognize what was happening, or couldn’t quite believe it.
“What?” he said quietly, pink blood frothing over his layers of chins.
“So long,” Ryan panted. “Enjoy Hell!” He carefully placed the almost molten iron tip over Sandor’s mouth, then thrust with all of his weight behind it.
The hissing of steam and the stench of blistering flesh flooded Ryan’s nostrils, almost making him puke into the priest’s upturned face. The doomed Father Sandor thrashed and kicked like a blubbery landed whale, a muffled, choking scream of living horror erupting from him.
But Ryan was inexorable and as cold as granite, pushing the probe down to the back of the monk’s mouth, over the burned tongue, into the top of his throat, filling the dying man’s lungs with the stink of his own body burning. He drove the poker deeper and deeper, until it was nearly two feet deep inside the murderous priest’s chest.
The body shuddered, and tears flooded from the bruised eyes. There was a trickle of bright arterial blood from the open mouth, hissing on the hot iron.
And then stillness.
KRYSTY HAD A DARK BRUISE flowering on the side of her forehead, close to the hairline, and she was still trembling from the horror of the experience. But apart from the residual shock, she was in good shape.
Ryan had retrieved his stick, limping heavily and biting his lip in the fresh pain from getting a kick on the bullet wound from Father Sandor.
But at least they were both still alive and relatively unharmed, and hadn’t joined the poor maimed corpse that still hung reproachfully in the chains from the wall of the noisesome crypt.
Krysty had found a large barrel of lamp oil among the shadows of the cellar.
“Be good to clean out this nest once and for all,” she said. “Cremate that vile piece of human shit at the same time.” She kicked the corpse of the fat monk with the chiseled toe of her dark blue boots.
“Sounds good. Let’s do it.”
They managed to heave the barrel halfway up the steps from the crypt before knocking out the bung, letting the liquid gush down onto the stone flags.
“Heat from the braziers won’t ignite it, will it?” Krysty asked.
“No. Not like gasoline. Chuck a couple of the pews down into it to feed the flames once they start.”
Safely out in the body of the picturesque church, they each picked up and reholstered their blasters. Ryan took the blasphemous Bible from the lectern and pitched it down into the crypt, having torn out a handful of pages first, twisting them into a makeshift torch.
“Ready?”
She nodded, handing him a self-light. “Sure. Let’s do it and get out of here.”
He flicked the match, applying it to the bundle, watching the flare of flame, bright in the dim interior of the church. He tossed it down the flagged steps, pulling back at the whoosh of flame from below. They moved toward the door as black smoke wreathed out into the chancel.