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opponent's padded nylon vest was so filled with down, or more likely quick-drying Thinsulate, that it had absorbed the force of the blow. A grunt from the man indicated that damage had been done, but not enough to incapacitate him.
    Drew's opponent had already braced himself, bending his knees, supporting his back against a tree. Drew had to thrust with the heel of his other palm, this time toward the throat. But his opponent responded. As lightning blinded Drew (but presumably his opponent as well), he sightlessly sought to deflect the blow that he knew would be aimed at his heart.
    He'd used his right hand first. So now he thrust his left palm upward, tilting it slightly inward, anticipating that his opponent - having been struck at the heart -would have to respond from the opposite half of his body.
    Drew's left palm struck his opponent's lunging right arm at the elbow, dislocating it. The force of the impact caused them both to reel off-balance in the mud. Drew heard the man's groan. His enemy slipped, colliding with him, entangling his dislocated arm in the bib of Drew's muddy robe. The bib was large enough that it could have been used as a sling.
    As darkness returned, they found themselves locked together, chest to chest. Drew smelled the garlicky sausage that the man had eaten. The unfamiliar stench of meat was nauseating.
    He pushed, then braced himself, his enemy pushing back. They skittered one way, then another, sliding across the mud, their breathing strident.
    Drew felt his opponent reaching backward, groping for something on his hip.
    He remembered.
    The knife sheathed on his opponent's belt.
    Prepared to grab for the hand that would hold the knife, Drew frantically changed his mind. He had to strike sooner. He needed a weapon.
    The weapon was close at hand. Oblivious to the significance he grabbed the crucifix that dangled on a chain around his neck. He clutched Christ's head and rammed the long slender base of the crucifix up his opponent's widened right nostril.
    The storm unleashed its full fury. As if condemning what Drew had done, the sky blazed with so many jagged bolts of lightning that Heaven itself seemed fractured.
    The man wasn't dead. Drew hadn't expected him to be. But such an invasion to a bodily orifice would produce shock. Predictably, the man straightened in agony, wailing, beginning to shake. Amazingly, his survival mechanisms continued to function, his free hand lunging with the knife.
    Still locked against the shuddering body, Drew parried the knife, its blade slicing through the sleeve of his robe, and jabbed the web of skin between his thumb and first finger up hard against the man's throat, hearing the windpipe crack.
    Lightning struck beside him, disintegrating the nearest tree. The roaring brilliance stunned him, lifting him off his feet. While splinters lanced him, he and the man were thrown from the forest. They tumbled into the clearing, rolling down the slope, twisting over each other, now Drew on top, now the man, thumping to a stop against a boulder. Drew gasped from the impact. Straining to disengage the man's arm from his robe, he peered down at the gloom-obscured face, touched the vein on the side of the neck, and realized that the man was dead.
    Drew gagged. The crack of the lightning still reverberated in his ears. Dizzy, he shook his head and squinted through double vision toward the top of the clearing, toward the glowing smoke that rose from the shattered base of a tree ten feet from the now shredded nylon sheet. The smell of ozone drifted heavily around him. Lightning formed a rictus in the sky.
    He shuddered, again peering down toward the man he'd killed. When he'd entered the monastery, he'd sworn that the killing had come to an end. And now?
    He could have justified killing the man in anger - for the monks, if not for Stuart Little. Anger was a natural human fault, an innate weakness. The legacy of Cain. But he hadn't killed in anger. He'd passed far from anger,