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regardless of how many men he’d brought. With him unconscious on the floor, their mission had just become easier, but by no means finished. They still had Joshua’s loyal followers to deal with.
    Angus recognized the two men immediately, brothers David and Simon Driskle, two disillusioned young slackers who had never really fit in here in the Grove. They were Americans by birth, and had lived in the nearby town of Sanford before they’d met Joshua Miller and fallen hook, line, and sinker for the enigmatic preacher. They’d moved here three years ago and lived together, just as things were starting to turn sour, and both brothers had fanatically supported Reverend Miller since day one. Angus wasn’t surprised to see them still here, loyal to the end.
    The Driskle brothers were huddled together in fear under an overturned pew but went crazy when they saw their leader drop to the ground and stop moving. They sprang to his defense, wild-eyed and screaming, grabbing any weapon within reach. David found a long, sharp piece of thick stained glass, and Simon retrieved the length of steel pipe that had toppled their master. Both men charged into the crowd of elders, stabbing and swinging with reckless abandon, uncaring that the men they attacked would have gladly let them walk away unharmed if only they’d come to their senses and lay down their weapons. The elders were here to take out ReverendMiller, not a few disheveled men whose loyalty was blindly misplaced.
    Their attack was short-lived, but savage. The eldest Driskle ran his thick glass shard up through the open mouth of Davey Leask, blood and brains spraying halfway to the ceiling in a warm crimson shower, and Simon managed to cave in three skulls with his pipe before the village elders swarmed over them and pinned them to the ground. Even disarmed, the brothers fought like feral animals, punching, kicking, and scratching from the bottom of the pile until they were beaten into silence by the group of men above.
    The lone woman in the sanctuary, Harriet Jones, was a thin woman in her late thirties. She’d been widowed four years earlier when her husband had drowned in a freak fishing accident. Reverend Miller had been there to comfort her in her time of grief and there were whispers around the Grove that since then they’d secretly become lovers. Unlike the Driskle brothers, Harriet didn’t appear to have any fight in her, taking advantage of the time they’d afforded her to go to Reverend Miller’s side to check if he was okay. When Angus finally looked her way, Harriet was in tears, kneeling beside Joshua, gently dabbing a white cloth against the side of his bleeding head.
    “Damn you all,” she kept quietly repeating. “Damn you all…”
    Two village elders went to her side, intent on gently removing her from the unconscious reverend’s body, but the moment they reached for her arms, Harriet sprang at them like a lioness guarding her newborn cub. She went straight for the throat of Donald Blackstone, sinking her teeth into his Adam’s apple and windpipe, biting down with everything she had until her teeth cracked audiblytogether. Blood gushed into her mouth and poured down both their chests, Don trying to scream but once she removed her mouth and spit a big chunk of his flesh onto the floor, air rushed in and out of the massive hole she’d made and nothing but frothy red bubbles gurgled out. Don reached toward Harriet with both hands—whether his intentions were to seek revenge or help—but in the end he got neither. He dropped at his killer’s feet, his life leaking away before he’d hit the ground.
    Thomas Grant, the other elder near Harriet, quickly wrestled the crazy woman to the ground but not before she’d managed to rake her long nails across his face and leave a trail of four deep grooves that would scar him for life. Harriet might have done more damage than that, trying to get her fingers into Thomas’s eyes, but luckily Angus and the