"Smith, Guy N - Sabat 04 - The Druid Connection" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Guy N)

CHAPTER FIVE



SABAT AND Kent moved simultaneously towards the door and hit the darkness outside fast and low, trained commandos precipitated into battle at a moment's notice, knowing that every shadow might conceal an enemy; a foe more deadly than any they had faced during their SAS days.

The night air still vibrated from the scream. Slowly it died away. They paused alongside the privet hedge, waited, but it did not come again.

'We'd better check the churchyard,' Sabat whispered. His mouth was dry and he was not sufficiently prepared to go forth into battle at this stage against an unknown enemy. But somewhere somebody was in deadly peril. It might already be too late. Sabat and Kent had no choice.

Sabat sensed the coldness again, the cloying presence of evil as though frozen fingers were trying to grab him and pull him back. He tried to ignore it, determined not to be overwhelmed by another psychic attack. It was Kent he worried about most, though. A cold ruthless fighter but the journalist was not familiar with the forces of darkness. It was him they would try to pull down first.

'Kent,' Sabat whispered hoarsely. 'Keep close to me, don't let me out of your sight. And . . . and take this.'

Kent stared at the small silver object which was thrust into his hand. That tiny crucifix again, the one Sabat had tried to test him with earlier. Oh Christ, was Mark Sabat becoming some sort of religious nut?

'Don't be stupid,' the Fleet Street man's tones were harsh with contempt and annoyance. 'There's maybe somebody out there just got murdered. We're not going to start preaching to the killer or anything like that are we, Sabat?'

'Be warned,' Sabat thrust his face close to his companion's. 'We are not up against mortal enemies tonight. Whoever our adversaries are they will first try to destroy our minds, render us babbling imbeciles just as they did Vicar Cleehopes who was a very powerful exorcist himself. We must fight them with such weapons as this, have faith in ourselves.'

'Now you are fucking preaching,' Kent sneered, tossing the crucifix up and down in his hand. 'Still, I suppose it's only to be expected from one who's worn a bleeding dog-collar himself. Okay, if you want it that way, Sabat, then that's okay by me but don't get any ideas about converting me. You know damned well I'm an atheist.'

Sabat stiffened. Had the dark powers already begun to work on Kent, alienating him against Sabat?

'I know,' Sabat smiled. 'You're an atheist, Kent. You don't believe in God so therefore how can you believe in them.'

The journalist checked an angry retort and an expression of bewilderment flooded his rugged features in the faint moonlight. 'You're right, Sabat,' he said, as though he had to force the words out. 'I don't believe in them. They're a load of crap, superstition put about by these ignorant villagers to scare the life out of everybody.'

Sabat stretched out his hand, took the crucifix back and dropped it into his pocket. The wind appeared to strengthen suddenly from a gentle breeze to a tearing gale, buffeted them, then died down as quickly as it had begun. A show of anger by the evil around them, a temporary setback for the lurking powers because Sabat had produced an unexpected ace out of his occult pack. It had worked this time but it might not again.

'Let's move,' Sabat took the lead, knew that the other followed him. He tried not to think what they might come up against beyond the lychgate which stood silhouetted against the night sky some twenty yards ahead of them. The awful possibilities were innumerable.

'I can smell smoke,' Kent breathed. 'Christ, what a bloody awful stink!'

Sabat wrinkled his nostrils. There was certainly a pungent aroma being wafted on the night breeze, like a smouldering garden bonfire, only more cloying. He sniffed the air in the manner of a hunting beast but failed to recognise the smell other than that of burning. His thoughts flipped briefly to the incinerated body of the Reverend Philip Owen and further back in time to one Dr William Price. They were not pleasant thoughts.

The churchyard was in total silence as they eased through the lychgate. Even that gentle breeze seemed to have dropped and a patch of cloud scudded across the face of the moon as though the heavens feared to look down upon this place. Kent was close to Sabat as they awaited the re-emergence of the moon.

Slowly, reluctantly, the pale silvery light flooded the scene again, showed rows of untended graves, the grass roughly mown between them in a maze of pathways. A forgotten place where people feared to tread.

The smoke was thicker, more pungent now, making their eyes smart. Sabat coughed, pointed across to the far corner of the cemetery, a section that was hidden in the shadows cast by a clump of towering yew trees. 'That's where the smoke's coming from,' he whispered. 'Let's make our way across there.'

The grass beneath their feet was springy, their progress silent. Moving slowly, trying to scan every patch of shadow around them through eyes streaming from the smoke, making it impossible to see anything. Which was why they were within three or four yards of the figure beneath the foremost yew tree before they saw it!

'Jesus wept!' Kent clutched Sabat's arm, instinctively trying to tug him back. 'What the fuck is it?'