Ahead of Trejo, the room opened up into a crypt. Bones were piled in niches and the air reeked of decay. This was pretty unusual construction; he was pretty sure a modern American church, even a Catholic one, wouldn't have an actual crypt like it would in Europe.
The room was dimly lit by a hundred black candles, most planted on human skulls but many on goats and mutated or twisted-looking cattle.
He could a large figure standing at the far end of the room, a skeleton with red jeweled eyes, dressed in the robes and vestments of a Catholic Bishop... an Anti-Bishop, he guessed. The skeleton was holding aloft a massive hand-and-a-half sword of obvious quality and antiquity.
Quick as lightning, Trejo drew his machete, but deep in shadowed niches on either side of him two bolts of Hellfire struck him, stunning him. He fell to his knees, unable to react.
"Ha! Another Templar to send to the fires of Hell! That makes three, two today alone! I want him unharmed! When we sacrifice him with the sword of the first Templar, my power will be complete and I will be invincible!"
Insane maniacal laughter followed, which would have pissed Trejo off to no end if he wasn't being currently hog-tied by two of the bitches he'd previously been stalking through the irradiated rubble of the city. He tried to clear his head and resist but his body wasn't responding in a coordinated fashion. Also, as cliche as the Anti-Bishop's speech and laughter might have seemed, in the un-Holy Wasted West there might be more than a grain of truth in that mad rambling. Especially if the fiend truly held a powerful Templar blade as he claimed...
Upstairs, the group was halfway to the altar when they beheld a strange procession exiting what looked to be a small stairwell door off to the right.
Leading was someone in Bishop's robes... but his face looked strange, and his eyes glowed red. He held a gigantic sword. Following him were two of the robed cultists, struggling to carry between them a very large man hog-tied and struggling.
They were coming from the right, then heading down the central aisle towards the blood-soaked altar at the far north end of the church in the Apse. They would reach it before the Posse did (assuming they didn't pick up the pace any).
The skeleton-Bishop spotted the Posse, and urged his minions to carry their burden faster ahead of him. He half-turned to block the Posse's progress, still backing towards the Apse and the Altar at the far end of the Cathedral. It was clear he intended to keep moving but hopefully slow the Posse down so his cultists could place their burden on the Altar before the Posse could interfere.
