Possess

away from the widening fissure.
    “We have to get out of here,” he said.
    “Right.” Bridget looked down at her body—five and a half feet of nonglowing, nonangelic high school sophomore. She was glad to be normal again, and yet she almost missed that electric power of her Watcherness.
    Father Santos picked up Sammy, cradling him. Her brother looked unnaturally pale.
    “Is he dead?”
    Father Santos opened his mouth, but she never heard what he said. With an earsplitting crack, one of the huge ceiling beams in the middle of the church broke free and collapsed to the floor. Broken bits of plaster and splintered wood flew in every direction. Another beam, closer to the altar, followed suit.
    Father Santos pointed to the back of the altar. “Matt.”
    Matt! She’d totally forgotten about him. She sidestepped a fallen candelabra and found Matt’s body behind the altar. She gently rolled him onto his side and brushed his sandy blond hair from his face. There was a gash over his left eye, already crusty with dried blood, but his body was warm and he was breathing.
    He was still alive.
    She stroked his cheek with the back of her hand. “Matt? Matt, can you hear me?”
    She felt his body shift, and his eyelids fluttered. “Bridge?” he said slowly. He squinted at her. “Bridge, are you okay?”
    “Thanks to you.”
    He reached a hand up to her face, then winced. “What happened?”
    Father Santos crouched over them. “We’ll explain later. Can you stand? We need to get out of here. Now.”
    Matt grunted as Bridget helped him to his feet. His left arm hung limp at his side, and his knee was twisted. She draped Matt’s good arm around her neck and started for the sacristy.
    Another jolt rocked the church as one of the giant pillars flanking the back wall severed from its foundations and toppled forward. Bridget hauled Matt out of the way and scrambled down the altar behind Father Santos as the pillar slammed into the wall, blocking the sacristy door.
    Father Santos lost no time. He heaved Sammy over his shoulder and headed right down the center aisle. Bridget and Matt limped behind as glass exploded overhead. One by one, the stained glass windows shattered into millions of colored shards that rained down on them like confetti. Broken glass crunched beneath their feet. Plaster and tiles, glass and iron, pieces of the church crashed around them as they shimmied over a fallen ceiling beam. Father Santos dripped with sweat and Bridget’s heart pounded in her chest, but they were almost there, almost to the main entrance.
    As a sickening roar erupted from behind them, Bridget craned her neck and saw that the hellhole had enveloped the entire front of the church. The altar and sacristy were already gone. The back wall collapsed, and the ceiling began to crumble.
    They weren’t going to make it.
    “Keep moving,” Father Santos puffed. “Don’t look back.”
    Ten more steps, and they made it to the door. Father Santos threw it open, and Bridget and Matt came barreling through behind him. The earth shook again as they careened down the steps and collapsed on the front lawn of St. Michael’s.
    Bridget looked up in time to see the entrance of the church crumble in on itself. The last of the roof disintegrated. The walls tumbled inward. In the building’s final death throes, an enormous mushroom cloud billowed up from the ruins. It surged into the sky, making one last affront to Heaven. Then the entire cloud was sucked down into the sinkhole.
    Bridget blinked as she watched wisps of smoke and dust filter up. They’d done it. Somehow she and Father Santos had defeated a demon king, defeated Monsignor Renault, defeated the evil that slept within the church itself. And saved Sammy.
    “One—two—three—four—five—six—seven—eight—”
    Bridget spun around. Father Santos hunched over Sammy’s body, his arms locked straight, his hands compressing against her brother’s chest as he counted out loud.
    “What’s wrong?”
    “—nine—ten—eleven—twelve—thirteen—fourteen—
fifteen.” Father Santos bent down, grasped Sammy’s chin and pinched his nose closed, then breathed heavily into his mouth.
    Bridget scampered across the grass to her brother’s side. “What’s wrong ?”
    “Not breathing,” Father Santos panted between chest compressions.
    Matt grunted as he pulled himself up behind her. “Bridget, maybe you shouldn’t—”
    “He’s my brother,” she said, whirling on him. “And