We met up at the Wicker Stop again, and Adam was about to start outlining a plan to get into the church when we were interrupted by Carmen. She had someone with her. About my age, at a guess, immaculately dressed, cross necklace. Yikes. His name was Alabaster, he'd had the same problem getting into the church as Gillian, and Carmen thought we were the best people to help him out. And she was probably right. After the things she's seen I understand why she didn't want to stick around.
Alabaster wasn't sold on the 'break into the church' concept at first, but once we managed to convince him the vicar was doing bad things, he agreed to help out. Just this once. Hah, like that's going to happen. He was pretty useful though. He knows the vicar and was able to persuade him to stay at home that evening, and also had a key to get into the church, thus taking out of the 'breaking' part of breaking in. He went over there early, then called back to say he'd had no trouble getting in there and he was going to meet us there.
So, he was trapped there, we all concluded.
We headed out to join him not long after dark. Mike and Adam went in to join Alabaster while Robin and me checked out the ward from the outside. I was hoping that just once we could get through a case without Robin or Adam peeing on anything, but clearly not. Once Robin emerged from the bushes we did a circuit of the church and found the ward seemed to be bulging slightly and was an inch further out from the church boundaries than when we'd checked it yesterday. We wondered what shape it was higher up, so once we'd checked that neither the vicar nor Alabaster was watching, I flew up to investigate. The ward was dome shaped, and went a lot higher up above the church spire than I expected.
On the way down I noticed something odd. One of the carved stone faces on the outside of the church (not a gargoyle, gargoyles are ornamental drainpipe spouts, not stone monsters, whatever Disney might say) turned to look at me.
We couldn't hang around outside forever, and now I understood more about the ward it was less of an effort to force my way through it. Robin was struggling a bit, and looked very odd as he passed through - as if something had replaced his nose with something else's nose. But I'm hardly in a position to be making negative comments about people's temporary bodily features. My shoulders were itching where my wings sprout from.
The others had made good progress in the church. Well, Michael had. Alabaster seemed to be spending his time praying, and I don't know what Adam was up to. But Michael had found an embroidered pocket in the vicar's robes with a distinctive sigil on it. It wasn't my family crest this time, thankfully, but it was clearly something religious given how much I disliked it. Adam was able to identify it as being associated with a lost relic used to create wards.
It was looking like we were going to have to confront the vicar, but first we had to deal with the sound of moving stone. I ran outside with Robin, and found the stone faces had now become stone birds, and definitely not gargoyles which as previously stated are ornamental drainpipe spouts, not murderous little stone birds screaming the word 'purge' straight into my head while hurling themselves through the air at me.
Robin took one out with his rifle and shot another with his handgun, but didn't manage to completely take out either of them. Michael got the one off Robin's back, but the other climbed back up the steeple (and wasn't the belfry looking darker than usual) and got away. I thought about going after it, but at that point the vicar showed up. Whatever Alabaster had told him, it clearly wasn't enough to make him ignore a gunshot.
The vicar was going on an understandable tirade, but then suddenly calmed down. I felt for his emotions, and there was definitely something going on. I suspect there's something Alabaster isn't telling us, particularly given his ward problems, but right now I needed to talk to the vicar. I gave Robin and Adam the 'piss off' look, met the vicar's eyes, and talked. I'm really getting the hang of this voice now.
A cup of tea in the vicarage along with Alabaster and we'd got most of the story. As suspected, he was trying to protect his people from demons and had used a relic to do it. I again insisted the things that had been taking people in the woods were goblins, but not even my voice could sway him there. So I took a different tack, pointing out that it was going wrong, and wasn't discriminating the way he intended. After all, it had kept out Alabaster who was clearly a devout and god fearing person, but had let Adam in. And now people were getting hurt, particularly Michael who hadn't fared particularly well against the stone birds.
Unfortunately his takeaway was that he needed to tweak the wards, not remove them, and he wasn't willing to let us help, but at least it was a start. We would have to watch him carefully.
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