“To atone for your sins—and none of that flogging you do for that old pervert Father Paul. No, I want you to admit that you’re a liar and a fraud,” the killer said, sneering, “that you’re unfit to be a bride of Christ. Just like the others.”

“Oh, Dear Father,” Charity whispered. “You know?”

“That you had a love child with Arthur Wembley?” the killer sneered.

Now, without the voice’s rasp, Valerie thought she recognized it; she’d heard it before. A soft voice . . .

I’m sorry, Reverend Mother, the voice had said as Sister Charity’s lips pinched in silent rebuke.

Valerie’s heart froze.

It was the same voice she’d heard in the garden at St. Marguerite’s, the same, she now realized, as the snotty little girl with the cast thirty years earlier, who had barred Cammie from the slide and said slyly, “You know what seven-seven-three-four is, don’t you? It’s hell.”

Sister Devota?

She was the killer?

A woman?

A nun?

No! That was nuts . . . too crazy . . .

As if the killer had read her mind, she sprang into action. Val, still gripping the gun, heard a frantic quick shuffling of feet, shoes sliding over the floor. A scuffle of sorts. A struggle.

No!

Val took a step forward as a woman, Sister Charity, mewled pitifully.

Then all became suddenly quiet.

Deathly quiet, the tomb feeling like death itself.

Goose bumps rose on the back of Valerie’s arms, fear wrapping cold talons over her soul.

Save her . . . you have to save her.

Slowly she crouched, glancing behind her into the inky folds of darkness, feeling as if she were about to be ambushed.

Someone coughed.

Val whipped her head toward the sound, toward the eerie wash of blue light just as a grating voice slithered from the murky dead air. “Come on out of the shadows, Valerie. Oh, yes, I know you’re there. I know you followed me. I waited for you. So come on out.”

Val’s stomach dropped. She didn’t move a muscle.

“You heard me,” Devota said, angry now. “Come out from your ridiculous hiding place. Don’t you know you can’t hide? You’re on my turf now, Val. Mine and God’s.”

Val still didn’t move. She could still get the drop on this psycho!

“Oh,” the raspy voice said, as if suddenly remembering some small detail. “And drop the gun, or I will, right here and now, in front of your eyes, slit your pathetic mother’s throat!”

Slade heard voices.

Not from the auction overhead but from the dark space in front of him, the words garbled and soft as they slid from deep in the tunnels that he’d found, a complicated series of tombs that smelled of death and decay. A place where rats scurried, pipes dripped, and he felt as if he were walking through the smoldering ashes of long-forgotten lives.