“Sophia!” screamed Father Esteban as he leapt to his feet and stared in uncomprehending horror at what he was seeing. The masked intruder held the nun with one hand. Sister Sophia twisted and writhed in the grip, beating at the hand with her small fist; and then the man did the impossible—he lifted the nun even higher until her toes barely touched the floor, and then higher still so that she hung inches above the stone.

With a cry of horror, Father Esteban snatched up the dagger he had just set down and rushed across the room, tottering on feet whose circulation had not fully returned.

The nun tried to scream a warning, or perhaps a plea, but she could force no sound at all past the stricture in her throat. Her pale face had flushed red and was now turning a violent purple.

“Let her go!” bellowed Esteban, and he drove the blade of the knife toward the chest of the figure cloaked in drapes and darkness. But the figure hissed at him like a jungle cat and flung the writhing nun at him with unnatural force. Father Esteban had no chance to dodge and he took her weight full in the chest; then they were falling in a shrieking sprawl of arms and legs. Father Esteban crashed to the stone floor and Sister Sophia’s weight landed hip first onto his chest with a sound like breaking sticks. Pain exploded in Father Esteban’s chest, and his eyes filled with sparks of white fire.

The nun sagged down, unconscious. Esteban struggled to push her off of him, to see the attacker, to draw in a single breath of air. The slender dagger was still clutched in one hand but it was useless to him.

Then, without warning, the weight was gone. The intruder was there, his fists knotted in the nun’s black habit, and without even a grunt of effort he tore the black cloth apart to reveal the white undergarments; then he slashed and ripped these until the naked and innocent flesh of the nun was revealed. It was a horrible transgression, and Father Esteban bellowed in outrage and fury, but the intruder ignored him as he studied the young breasts and clean limbs of the nearly naked woman. The intruder smiled and nodded.

“Yes, she will do very well” he said, and pushed her roughly aside.

The hulking black figure then turned slowly toward the priest. His red robes swirled in the stiff breeze that blew in through the destroyed window. There was no mark, no symbol or badge on any of his garments, and they covered him entirely except for a narrow opening through which two intensely unnatural eyes glared. They were fierce and strange, their irises as blood red as his clothes.

Like the eyes of a rat.

Like the eyes of a demon.