The Stolen Gospels by Brian Herbert Page A

explosion rocked the house.
    Camilla scrambled for cover, pulling Lori with her. The girl grabbed for her purse, but dropped it.
    Screams filled the air, and the guide dog barked. Something heavy landed on the roof. Men shouted outside, amidst the helicopter noise and gunfire.
    “What the hell is going on?” the blind woman cried out. Then she screamed as the front door burst open, followed by a burst of gunfire that tore through her chest and face. Her horribly mutilated body thudded to the floor. Another woman wailed, “Oh God, I’m dying! Who would do this to us? Why?”
    Concealed from the gunmen by a couch and desk that had been moved aside for the meeting, Camilla and Lori crawled toward the hallway behind them. Bullets shattered a glass-fronted Victorian cabinet, and Camilla complained of pain in her lower legs. Then something exploded by the right side of her head. She crumpled to the floor.
    “Mom!” Lori cried out. She saw two men in the living room, carrying automatic rifles. Silver-and-black uniforms with caps, and black cross insignia on the lapels and arms.
    Fighting tears of rage, she dragged her mother into the hallway and then into a large hall closet, pulling the door shut behind them to form a dark cocoon.
    Lori’s heart raced. She felt her mother’s wrist, checking for a pulse. It was erratic.
    “I’ll be okay, sweetheart,” Camilla assured her, struggling to speak. Her voice faded. “I’m . . . fine.”
    Lori suppressed a sob. She felt the wrist again. The pulse was slow.
    “Mom!” she husked. “Mom!”
    No response.
    How badly was she hurt? There wasn’t enough light to see, and the girl was afraid to poke around on the head, for fear of exacerbating the injury. Her mother’s legs had been wounded, too, so Lori worried about a severed artery. Hurriedly, she removed her own long cotton stockings and tied one tightly around each of her mother’s thighs, hoping these makeshift tourniquets would slow any loss of blood.
    Sticky wetness covered the right side of Camilla’s head, a definite wound, so this was the side Lori kept up, atop her lap. It seemed to her that the wound would bleed less this way. She prayed it was only superficial.
    Hugging her mother tightly, she wished she hadn’t been disrespectful to her. Camilla was unresponsive, breathing irregularly.
    “Mom, can you hear me?” Lori whispered.
    Still no answer. The breathing became more erratic, then settled into a regular pattern.
    Oh God , Lori thought. Please don’t let my mother die! Take me if you must, but not her ! She remembered seeing the blind woman hit by gunfire and falling. And many of the others. They had to be dead. It was so horrible, so senseless.
    The thickly-carpeted closet was devoid of objects. Desperately, Lori felt in the darkness around the edges of the rug. Lifting a corner she found a smooth, hard surface beneath. There was no hatch leading to a crawl space, no escape.
    An explosion rocked the house. Shouts came from another room, and more gunfire. The dog started barking again, then gunfire sounded and the animal yelped.
    “Four minutes!” someone called out. Lori couldn’t tell if it was male or female. The voice was peculiar, a high-pitched whine.
    She heard the voice again, a little farther away this time, shouting commands. This person seemed to be in charge. Gunfire rang repeatedly.
    A woman cried out: “Save us, oh She-God!”
    She-God again? Lori didn’t understand. Dixie Lou had said the entity was all-powerful, and what else? She couldn’t recall.
    Cautiously, she opened the closet door, but it bumped into something. She pushed harder, saw that a woman’s body was blocking the door. Squeezing out through the opening, she identified Su-Su Florida on the floor, not moving. Blood ran from her side, pooling on the hardwood beneath her.
    Feeling the woman’s carotid artery, Lori detected no heartbeat at all.
    “She’s dead,” a voice said, startling the girl. Turning quickly, she saw