No one could explain what happened. The diocese sent investigators. The police filed a report. Eventually, they called it a gas leak.
He raised one finger. A line of white fire, clean as a scalpel, bisected the altar from top to bottom. The marble fell apart like two halves of a clamshell. Anders’s mother yanked him under the pew. Through the gap in the wood slats, Anders watched the man walk forward, step over the ruined altar, and lay a palm on the tabernacle. The Divine Fury
“Neither did we,” she said. “Until he started visiting.” No one could explain what happened
Then the stained-glass window of the Sacred Heart exploded inward. Eventually, they called it a gas leak
The priest, old Father Mihailov, clutched his crucifix. “Who are you?”
And Anders felt it. Not heat. Not pain. Something else. A sudden, terrible clarity. Every lie he’d ever told, every small cruelty, every time he’d watched his little sister fall and done nothing—it all rushed to the front of his brain, lit up like a prosecutor’s evidence board. He was guilty. Not in the abstract, Sunday-school way. Specifically . Irrefutably.
The man’s black eyes flickered. For just a moment, the brass returned, then vanished.