The Source - Michael Cordy [134]
More serpentine tentacles hovered before him. However, unlike the appendages pulling him apart, these had bullet-shaped heads, razor teeth and baleful red eyes. The nymphs watched as the worms studied him: angels and demons united in their mission of torment. However, as terrifying as the worms were, Torino almost welcomed the release they offered. But how could he die now – here? He still had too much to do. Why had God forsaken him?
The first attack was so fast he barely saw the rock worm as it bored a perfectly circular hole in his stretched abdomen, then recoiled, dragging his entrails with it. Torino looked down at the intestines spilling over his belt and cried out in despair. The second worm bit into his left hip. Even as the third attacked, severing the fingers of his right hand, he still couldn't believe that the Lord wouldn't save him.
Only in the last seconds of his life, as the tentacles ripped his left arm from his torso, and the worms bored into his face, did his cries for salvation curdle into the screams of the damned.
Ross could hear Torino's screams from down the tunnel but he felt no satisfaction at his enemy's downfall. When the sound stopped, and the priest's blood flowed past him in the stream, he felt only fear – and shame. He had come here for no other reason than to save Lauren's life and, in this selfish quest, he had never once considered the garden's own need to survive. He had trespassed into the cradle of life, bringing death and destruction in his wake. Not only had he led Torino here but he'd failed to stop him and his men destroying the garden, killing nymphs and attacking the monolith.
As the angry nymphs and hydra closed in, he saw that he was as much an intruder as Torino, an unwelcome alien who had brought nothing but harm. The nymphs had saved him once – from his own kind – but now he was convinced they must punish him. As the tentacles came closer, he resisted the urge to turn and fight his way out. Instead he found himself reaching involuntarily for the heavy crucifix round his neck. The Latin cross, with its three-inch-long shaft and two-inch crossbeam, was crude in the palm of his hand. Etched into the soft metal at the centre were the initials AMDG, which Sister Chantal had explained denoted the motto of Father Orlando Falcon's Jesuit order: ad majorem dei gloriam, to the greater glory of God. He now understood that Father Orlando and Sister Chantal had lived and died by that dictum, putting their belief in their God above the doctrine of the Church. Whatever Ross himself believed, the purity of their faith humbled him now.
He felt something brush his skin. As he looked up, two tentacles touched his arm and dread coursed through him. Then the nymph with the red flowers in its hair appeared and reached for the cross. He took it off and surrendered it. As the nymph examined it others gathered round to touch it with a kind of reverence. He remembered how Sister Chantal had held it up to calm them when she had first entered the antechamber with him.
They gathered round it for some minutes, stroking it. Then the nymph with the red flowers returned it to him. Before he could replace it round his neck, the nymph pushed him hard in the stomach, forcing him to step back. It pushed him again and he took another step. The hydra's tentacles followed him, but when he glanced over his shoulder the nymphs behind him parted and formed an avenue. He continued shuffling backwards, holding the crucifix in one hand and Torino's backpack in the other, until he was out of the tunnel of blood. The nymph continued to push him through the antechamber until his back rested against the fallen rocks blocking the entrance to the garden. He knew he was no longer welcome and had to take his chances outside, however hot the garden might be. He backed into the narrow passage through which he and Bazin had crawled, keeping his eyes on the nymphs. The rocks on each side were hot but he dared not stop until he was in the garden, safe from the nymphs and the hydra.