By the light of the moon

aglow,
prevented them from seeing who lurked in those cloistered
elevations.
    The back wall of the nave lacked windows; however, the frieze
continued there, as did the scaffolding. Ten feet away, just to the
right of Shepherd, a ladder was built into the scaffold: rungs of
pipe coated with fine-grooved rubber.
    Dylan went to the ladder, touched a rung above his head, and
felt at once, like a scorpion sting, the psychic spoor of evil
men.
    Having hurried with him to the ladder, Jilly must have seen a
dire shift in his expression, in his eyes, for she said, 'Oh, God,
what?'
    'Three men,' he told her, taking his hand off the ladder rung,
repeatedly flexing and clenching it to work out the dark energy
that had leeched into him. 'Bigots. Haters. They want to kill the
entire wedding party, the priest, as many of the guests as they can
get.'
    Jilly turned toward the front of the church. 'Dylan!'
    He followed her stare and saw that the priest and two altar boys
were already in the sanctuary, descending the ambulatory from the
high altar to the chancel railing.
    From a side door at the front, two young men in tuxedoes entered
the nave, crossed toward the center aisle. The groom, the best
man.
    'We've got to warn them,' Jilly said.
    'No. If we start shouting, they won't know who we are, might not
understand what we're saying. They won't react right away –
but the gunmen will. They'll open fire. They won't get the bride,
but they'll cut down the groom and lots of guests.'
    'Then we've got to go up,' she said, gripping the ladder as if
to climb.
    He stayed her with a hand on her arm. 'No. Vibrations. The whole
scaffold will shake. They'll feel us climbing. They'll know we're
coming.'
    Shepherd stood in a most unusual posture for him, not bowed and
slumped and floor-gazing, but with his head tipped back, watching a
floating feather.
    Stepping between his brother and the feather, Dylan met him eye
to eye. 'Shep, I love you. I love you... and I need you to be here .'
    Refocusing his vision from the more distant feather to Dylan,
Shep said, 'The North Pole.'
    Dylan stood in bafflement for a moment before he realized that
Shep was repeating one of Jilly's answers to his monotonous
question Where's all the ice?
    'No, buddy, forget the North Pole. Be here with me.'
    Shep blinked, blinked as if with puzzlement.
    Afraid that his brother would close his eyes and retreat into
one mental corner or another, Dylan said, 'Quick, right now, take
us from here to there, Shep.' He pointed to the floor at their
feet. 'From here.' Then he pointed toward the top of the
scaffolding along the back wall of the nave, and with his other
hand, he turned Shep's head toward where he pointed. 'To that
platform up there. Here to there, Shep. Here to there.'
    The welcoming hymn concluded. The final notes of the pipe organ
reverberated hollowly through the vaults and colonnades.
    'Here?' Shep asked, pointing at the floor between them.
    'Yes.'
    'There?' Shep asked, pointing to the work platform above
them.
    'Yes, here to there.'
    'Here to there?' Shep asked through a puzzled frown.
    'Here to there, buddy.'
    'Not far,' said Shep.
    'No, sweetie,' Jilly agreed, 'it's not far, and we know you can
do much bigger things, much longer folds, but right now all we need
is here to there.'
    Seconds after the final notes of the hymn had quivered into
silence in the farthest corners of the church, the organist struck
up 'Here Comes the Bride.'
    Dylan looked toward the center aisle, perhaps eighty feet away,
and saw a pretty young woman step out of the narthex, escorted by a
handsome young man in a tuxedo, through a passage in the
scaffolding, past the holy-water font, into the nave. She wore a
blue dress with blue gloves and carried a small bouquet of flowers.
A bridesmaid on the arm of a groomsman. Concentrating solemnly on
her timing, they walked in that classic halting rhythm of bridal
processions.
    'Herethere?' asked Shep.
    'Herethere,' Dylan urged, 'Herethere!'
    The assembled guests had risen from their seats and turned to
witness the entrance of the bride. Their interest would be captured
so entirely by the wedding party that it was unlikely a one of
them, except perhaps a certain pigtailed girl, would notice three
figures vanish from a far, shadowy corner.
    With fingers still wet with Jilly's blood from when he'd touched
her on the hilltop, Shepherd reached once more for her wounded
hand. 'Feel how it works, the round and round of all that is.'
    'Here to there,' Jilly