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now Devin knew whose body this was. She didn’t know the young woman’s name…but she knew how she had died. Been murdered, rather.
    “What is this?” she breathed aloud, then regretted her words, as if afraid the congregation would hear her eavesdropping and turn to face the camera in unison. And then, as they stared back at her, she would see their faces. And suddenly, intuitively, Devin did not want to see those faces.
    A final figure had come up the aisle carrying a smaller bundle, which was passed into the hands of the officiating priest, who had risen from his throne. The new figure helped unwrap the parcel, and then the priest held it high above his head.
    It was too dark to make out what he held. But something dangled from it. A short length of…rope?
    Again, intuitively, Devin knew. It was a length of umbilical cord, sliced at one end but the other still wound around the neck of the infant the priest held above his hooded head.
    Devin screamed, twisted, jabbed her finger into her buzzer and held it there.
    “Help me, oh my God, help me! Stop them, STOP THEM! Hurry!” she shrieked. And her eyes darted to the time.
    Eleven fifty-five.
    They were going to take him. Those who claimed the unblessed.
    Devin didn’t wait for the buzzer to be answered. There was no more time to spare. She flung the blanket off her and swung her bare feet to the cold floor. She didn’t even bother with slippers. Bare feet offered better traction. She ignored the pains that lanced her and just bolted for the door.
    At the end of this floor, the old woman had said. Past the cafeteria…
    If God would not intervene, then she would have to do it. And if she could not stop them, then she would go with Christopher, wherever they took him.
    At the very end of the hall were twin doors she hadn’t noticed when she’d first come in. The end of the corridor was in gloom, but she could read the gold letters that spelled: St. Andrews Hospital Chapel.
    The doors were locked.
    Devin jerked at the knobs, cursing, screaming. She pounded with her palms. “Let me in, you bastards! Let me in!” She turned, looked wild-eyed around her. There was nothing to use as a battering ram. No fire axes on the walls. Devin threw her weak hurting body against the blank panels and wailed, “Oh, God, help me!”
    She pounded with both fists, seized the knobs in both hands, and turned them. They clicked.
    Shocked, for a moment she nearly hesitated. Then she flung the doors open.
    None in the congregation had admitted her; they were too obviously surprised as they whirled toward her. She did not look at them, being too close to madness already. Instead, she turned to the left and right, searching for something she knew must be there. A fount…
    The figures were shadows, and the shadows poured at her like dark winds, reached out hands to her that even before they could touch her were arctic cold. But Devin still didn’t look. She cupped both hands into a wall-mounted receptacle of cool water.
    Then, she walked up the aisle, carrying her dripping chalice of flesh before her. The reaching hands withdrew sharply, the dark forms recoiling like a black parted sea. There was a gasp of revulsion from their throats more like a rustling of autumn leaves. Devin ignored them. She wanted to run to the altar, but didn’t dare spill the water. The tears in her eyes made the candlelight scintillate, but she saw the head priest more clearly now. She saw that in the time it had taken her to reach and enter the chapel, he had set the nude little body of her son upon the chest of the woman on the floor, and draped one limp arm of the woman over him. It was not the umbilical cord around his neck—of course, the doctors had removed that. It was a black rope, representing that life line. Devin knew, then, that it was a black cord with which the young woman had been strangled.
    They were an obscene Madonna and child for this Christmas eve. It was not a funeral mass, but a midnight