“Perhaps a bird flew into the shutters,” suggested Father Esteban.

“Perhaps,” said Sister Sophia dubiously, and she took a reflexive step forward as if to stand between Father Esteban and harm.

They listened for several moments, but all they heard from outside was the fierce desert wind blowing across the endless wastes.

“A bird, then,” conceded Sister Sophia, though she did not open the window to confirm this. Both of them had heard the stories about this desert. About the jinni and other unholy demons who haunted the Arabian sands. Lost souls who lured travelers to oases and then feasted on them, flesh and bone.

Then the sound came again. A blow upon the casement, sharp and hard.

The nun crossed herself.

Father Esteban did not. Though a priest and investigator for the church, he privately regarded himself as a political cleric rather than a man of deep faith. It was not true to say that he had entirely lost his faith, because he had never entirely had it. He was the youngest son of his family and, as was traditional among the nobility, after his oldest brother began to manage the estates and his middle brother went to war, Esteban had gone into the priesthood. It had been expected of him, and gainsaying the policies of a thousand years of tradition and the iron will of his widowed mother had been impossible options.

Father Esteban slid his hand under a sheaf of old parchments to touch the handle of the thin-bladed knife he used to cut the tapes on official documents. It was not much, but it was better than prayer, at least in his experience.

Sister Sophia crept to the window and leaned an ear toward the drapes, listening. Her right fist was clutched so tightly around her rosary that her knuckles were white and her lips moved in a soundless prayer to the Virgin.

They waited. A minute. Two.

Five.

Silence was all they heard. Father Esteban let out a breath and uncurled his fingers from the knife.

Finally the nun began to relax, her cramped attitude of listening yielding first to conditional relief and then to rueful humor as she caught the eye of the priest.

“And here, look at us, cringing at sounds like children sent to bed on a moonless night. What a picture we are.”

Suddenly there was a tremendous crash as the shutters exploded inward, tearing the drapes from their rings and showering the nun with a storm of jagged splinters. The fierce impact staggered Sister Sophia, but she did not fall. Instead something dark lashed out and clamped around her throat, catching her, lifting her to her toes, choking off her screams. A bulky figure stepped through the shattered window, its face covered in a dark red mask, its body hidden beneath a cloak the color of old blood.