When all ten of Montrose's fingers had been impaled, the Pardoner attached the small brazen cymbals to his own thumb and forefinger. He rose and began to circle the table in a sort of slow-motion dance. Repeatedly pausing in mid-motion, he struck poses in a way that reminded the Scot of the Deathlords and their totemistic stances. The cymbals chimed. Each note seemed to echo for longer than it should.
Sick with pain, Montrose didn't realize the Pardoner had stopped circling until the hooded man rested his gnarled hands on his shoulders. Startled, the Stygian jumped. The motion jerked his immobilized arms and produced a fresh burst of agony.
The Pardoner bent down and whispered in Montrose's ear. "Whom do you hate?"
"Argyll. Hamilton. VanLengen. King Charles and the Crown Prince." With each name, he felt a flare of overwhelming rage, as if the pain in his hands was intensifying his anger. And then something writhed in the depths of his mind. His Shadow was stirring. Alarmed, he tried to twist his head around to look the Pardoner in the face. He couldn't quite turn it far enough.
The hooded man massaged the clenched muscles in Montrose's shoulders. "It's all right," the confessor said. "This time, give in. Let the venom flow, so I can neutralize it. Whom do you hate?"
"Heretics. Demetrius." The pain and fury sang on inside him.
"Whom do you hate?" the Pardoner asked.
"John," Montrose said. He was appalled at himself, but, with the rage wailing even louder, he couldn't deny that on some level his declaration must be true.
"Your son?" the Pardoner asked. "Why?"
"I took him to war and he died. He broke my heart."
"Whom do you hate?" the Pardoner asked.
"Magdalen. She refused to understand why I had to support the Crown, no matter what the cost. She stopped loving me. And finally she died, too."
"Whom do you hate?" asked the hooded man.
Montrose shuddered, stabbing fresh pain through his injured hands. The anger inside him was sickeningly intense. It felt as if it were shredding his spirit, and he wanted it to stop. "You know," he said. "We already talked about her."
"Say the name," the Pardoner insisted.
"Louise!" Montrose cried. "Louise!"
"What would you like to do to her?"
Images of torture and mutilation cascaded through the Stygian's mind. He felt his penis stiffen. "Tear her eyes out. Rape her. Cut off her hands and feet. Hang her a thousand times, the way they hung me."
"Whom do you hate?" the Pardoner asked.
"That's everyone," Montrose said.
"Whom do you hate?"
"No one else, damn you! Finish this! I don't want to feel this way any longer!"
"Whom do you hate?"
Montrose sensed his Shadow surging to the forefront of his mind, mingling itself with his psyche so thoroughly that he lost any sense of a separate entity coexisting with him inside his head. In a strange, odious way, it reminded him of how it had felt to be mortal. At the same time, his anger seemed to change, from a white-hot blaze to something cold and heavy.
"Myself," he said. "I hate myself."
"Why?" the Pardoner asked.
Montrose sneered in self-loathing. "So many reasons. I led my men off to die in a lost cause. I killed my own boy that way. I ruined my life for the sake of principles scoundrels like Argyll and Hamilton disdained, and it turned out they were right and I was wrong."
"Why else?" the Pardoner murmured.
"For trusting my betrayers. And for failing to win and hold their love. What was wrong with me? What ugliness did they perceive inside me, that made them feel it was permissible to forsake me?"
"Just a little more," the Pardoner urged. "Tell me the rest and the healing can begin."
"I hate the man I used to be," Montrose groaned. "But at the same time, I hate myself for casting his ideals aside. I don't know what to do or who to be!"
"You will," the Pardoner whispered, "because I'm about to tell you a secret, the greatest secret in all the universe. Once you leave this place, you may not remember it consciously, but even so, it will guide and inspire you for the rest of your daySi Would you like to hear it?"
"Yes," Montrose said. He couldn't imagine what the hooded man was babbling about—it sounded like Heretical mumbo jumbo—but anything to end the pain in his fingers and the even more agonizing emotions festering in his mind.
"Here it is then. You deserve it."
"Deserve what?"
"Your own contempt. You're a monstrous, crippled thing who richly deserves every pain and humiliation existence has ever seen fit to give you."
"That's mad," Montrose said, and it certainly didn't resemble the pronouncement of any Pardoner he'd ever consulted before. Yet the truth was, it didn't seem insane at all. It simply seemed like a summary of his own confessions'
"Don't resist," the Pardoner said. "Once you know the whole truth, your personal piece of it needn't trouble you anymore."
"What is the whole truth?" Montrose asked desperately. He felt so vile, so full of despair, that it was a wonder Oblivion hadn't already claimed him. And if the Pardoner couldn't help him, he wanted it to.
"That: no one else is any better than you," said the man in the hood. "Your own mournful history proves it. We all deserve to suffer. So forget your qualms and scruples, my lord Anacreon. Pursue your ambitions with a vengeance. When you look down on the underlings and thralls, you'll know that no matter how foul and worthless a creature you may actually be, at least you're better than they are. And whenever you destroy someone, you'll know you've cleansed creation of a bit of filth, and perhaps even justified your own existence in the process."
Montrose struggled to evaluate what he was hearing. It sounded demented. Wrong.
Yet it sounded right, also, as if it were the only possible remedy for his physical and spiritual pain.
As he began to succumb to the Pardoner's logic, he felt portions of his memory withering. He didn't forget his children or the friends who'd stayed faithful to the end, but a kind of significance drained out of his recollections. Soon he'd be able to think of them dispassionately, the way he might reflect on characters in a rather tedious play.
At the same time, the quality of his anger and self-contempt changed once again. At the core of the pain he discovered a kind of masochistic release. A promise that if he simply embraced his own inner putrescence, his shame would turn to joy.
Perhaps, he thought, the Pardoner still crooning blandishments in his ear, he should let go. Perhaps it was the only sensible course of action; and in any case, it certainly seemed the easiest. Then he noticed a flicker of movement from the corner of his eye. He turned his head to peer directly at it, only to find there was nothing there.
Confused and feverish as he felt, he still believed he knew what had just happened. As a Harbinger, he possessed the ability to peer into the Tempest, and occasionally he caught a momentary glimpse inside the eternal storm even when he wasn't trying to. Invoking his Arcanos, he looked again.
To behold a trio of Spectres, gaunt, gray creatures seemingly made of tatters of darkness and lengths of twisted bone. In the bewildering hyperdimensional manner of the Tempest, the creatures were still standing at the fringe of their own chaotic realm yet simultaneously clustered around the table in this very room, watching Montrose and the Pardoner with avid interest.
The Scot suddenly realized that what the monsters really hoped to see was his Shadow, essentially a Spectre in embryo, taking control of him. And they very well might. Because the Pardoner was feeding the parasite strength!
"Get away from me," Montrose mumbled, the words so slurred that it seemed impossible the Pardoner would understand them.
But evidently he did, because he said, "Don't struggle, my lord Anacreon. It's too late. And I promise, you'll be happier when it's over."
Montrose's memories continued to petrify, becoming gray and brittle. He felt the link between his mind and flesh attenuating. His sight began to dim.
Then from
somewhere deep inside him came a surge of defiance, a thunderbolt of pure outrage altogether different from the cold, malicious self-loathing eroding his will. Bellowing, he leaped up off his stool, knocking the Pardoner backward, and ripped his hands upward with all his remaining strength.
His fingers tore free, but the resultant burst of pain was indescribable. Blacking out, he collapsed to the floor. When he came to a moment later, his hands were dissolving into nothingness. The black pins fell tinkling to the grimy floor.
"I was too ambitious," said the Pardoner from behind him.
Montrose was in too much pain to move, but with an enemy present, he couldn't just lie helpless where he was. Somehow he managed to clamber to his feet. The floor tilted and the glowing spider webs dimmed, as if he was in danger of losing consciousness again. He stumbled around to face the man who'd hurt him.
"I should have made your Shadow a little stronger and let it go at that," the Pardoner continued. "That's the usual practice, and you wouldn't have noticed a thing. But you're such a wonderful prize that I got greedy. Now I'll simply have to kill you." Edging forward, he reached inside his coat and brought out a knife. It looked as if it was made of chipped black stone.
Trembling, Montrose tried to veil himself in darkness. Nothing happened. He was too spent to use an Arcanosy He attempted to retreat. His Shadow contested his intent, and his feet wouldn't move. Straining, the Scot pitted every iota of his will against the parasite's, and finally broke its grip. The sudden release of tension made him stagger.
By the time he recovered what currently passed for his balance, the Pardoner was nearly within striking distance. Montrose snatched for his pistol before remembering that he no longer had any fingers:to grasp it. The hooded man laughed.
"It is rather comical," Montrose rasped, "Although I might not see the humor if I hadn't been to France." With a silent prayer, though he couldn't have said to who or what, he lashed out with a kick.
The savate attack caught the Pardoner under the chin and snapped his head back. Montrose kept kicking him, in the groin and then the knee. The knife tumbled from the hooded man's hand, and he fell to the floor.
TheiStygian stamped on him, pulping flesh and snapping bones. By catching the Pardoner by surprise, he'd gained the advantage, but he was still half-crippled with pain. He didn't dare give his adversary a chance to counterattack. Besides, he wanted to keep hurting him. He wanted to mash his body into paste.
And eventually he did, more or less. Waves of darkness swept through the smaller wraith's flesh. His clothing slumped in on itself as the mass inside it dissolved. In another moment, the garments were all that remained.
Gasping and shuddering, cradling the stumps of his hands against his chest, Montrose dropped to his knees.. Then he remembered the three Spectres. Terrified that they'd slithered through the Nihil outside and were about to attack him, he looked frantically about, but didn't See any sign of them. Evidently, in the unpredictable manner of Such horrors, they'd decided to leave him alone, even though he was currently easy prey.
His Shadow squirmed inside him, quiescent for the moment but swollen with newfound power. Since he would now be leery of asking any Shadowlands Pardoner for assistance, he guessed he'd simply have to cOntrol it through vigilance and willpower for the time being.
At any rate, he now had excellent reason to suspect that the honest Pardoners/of the region weren't simply drifting off to other provinces. Someone was eliminating them to enable false Pardoners, practitioners of a corrupt version of the same Arcanos, to take their places and strengthen the Shadow of every wraith who called on them for aid.
But why? What did it all mean?
Montrose decided he'd better find out. He couldn't neglect the campaign against the Heretics, but with luck, he could manage sOme inquiries on the side. He just wished he could shake the feeling that he'd waited too long to begin examining the overall picture. That whatever threat was advancing through the darkness, nothing could stop it now.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Looking feminine in her platinum wig and a lacy gray blouse, Marilyn nodded at the dark, recessed doorway across Ursulines Avenue. "That's it," she said. "At least, we think it is. But I still advise against this. Rumor has it that other people have gone into that house and never come out." Astarte grimaced impatiently.
Bellamy shrugged. "What are our options? I don't mean to knock the Arcanum. I never would have gotten this far without you and your friends. But the truth of the matter is, you don't seem to have any information that relates to the Atheist murders. Maybe the people inside that building do."
"If they are people," Marilyn said glumly, and indeed, the Arcanum's intelligence about the dilapidated Vieux Carre townhouse, like so much of its data, was maddeningly vague. The fraternity had circumstantial evidence that a group with occult connections had owned the structure since the early 1800s, but few real details except for the fact that the occupants generally convened at night. "God knows, I want to solve our problem as much as you do, but still, we should be patient. We might turn up the very facts we need tomorrow."
Bellamy shook his head. "There's no time for patience. People are getting hurt. The Atheist is still killing clergymen. It could be that he made all those ministers go berserk, too. And when I phoned my boss to get an extension of my leave, I found out Nolliver's dead."
"But you said his death was determined to be a suicide," Marilyn replied, "and that everyone knew he was a troubled individual."
"I'm not taking anything for granted," Bellamy said. "The point is that despite your help, the investigation's stalled. We haven't even been able to learn the identity of the possessed guy who attacked your house. I'm willing to run a risk to get things moving again."
"And I want to see whatever's inside there," said Astarte, her eyes shining in the moonlight. "You and R. J. gave me my first break, Marilyn. You showed me that the paranormal is real. Now I have to take the next step."
Marilyn frowned. "Suit yourselves, then. At least I warned you. If you don't come out by dawn, I'll phone the police anonymously, though I'm virtually certain they won't be able to help you."
"Thanks," said Bellamy. He and Astarte started across the deserted street.
"It's so sad," Astarte murmured.
"What's that?" Bellamy replied, studying the shuttered windows. It was impossible to tell if anyone was peeking out through the spaces between the slats.
"Marilyn wants to become a part of the supernatural so badly. Yet she's known for almost a year that this place is here, and she's never done what we're about to do. Deep down, she's chicken, and that will keep her from ever getting her wish."
"At least she'll be alive," said Bellamy. "You could use a dose of her caution herself."
Astarte stuck her tongue out at him.
They climbed up onto the stoop. No sound whispered through the door, and no light shone through the cracks around it. With its paint peeling away in long strips, the house seemed abandoned, as, perhaps, it actually was.
A pair of screw holes at eye level revealed where a knocker had hung, but it was gone now. Bellamy couldn't find a doorbell, either, so he rapped on the panel with his knuckles. In the quiet, the pounding seemed unpleasantly loud. He imagined things stirring in the shadows up and down the street, peering to see what all the racket was about.
No one came to the door. He knocked harder, until the bottom of his fist began to ache. Still, no one replied. He turned the tarnished knob, but the door was locked.
"I guess we'll have to break in," Astarte said.
Bellamy scowled at the notion of doing so without a warrant or probable cause. He was used to upholding the law, not flouting it. But he was operating without the sanction of the Bureau anyway, in a situation where the old rules and procedures seemed absurd. "I guess we will," he replied, fishing in his pocket for his Swiss Army knife and lock pick.
Astarte looked disappointed when he brought them out. He guessed she'd been expecting some exotic gadget
from a James Bond movie, or at least an impressive array of burglar's tools. But Bellamy wasn't called upon to pick locks nearly often enough to carry such a collection of hardware around, nor should he should need it to get past what appeared to be a simple, old-fashioned mechanism.
He inserted the pick in the keyhole, then used the knife's screwdriver as a tension tool. As he exerted pressure, he felt the pins shiver, and then they clicked into the opening position.
He expected a momentary glow of satisfaction. That was what he usually felt when he finished such a task. Instead a chill oozed up his spine, and he had to swallow away a dryness in his throat. Because he'd just made it possible to go inside, and, as he suddenly realized, he didn't want to.
"Nice work," said Astarte. "Now open the damn thing."
"Okay," he said, closing the knife. "But, remember, let me go first, and do everything I tell you."
Astarte rolled her eyes. "Yes sir, J. Edgar."
Bellamy eased the door open. The foyer beyond it surprised him. The chandelier was glowing, if only faintly, and dim illumination from other sources spilled through the arches in either wall. Evidently someone had taken pains to ensure that not even a hint of light would leak outdoors. Fresh white roses in a crystal vase, along with a general absence of dust and cobwebs, suggested that the interior of the house was being well maintained. Yet paradoxically, a faint but noxious odor, reminiscent of both rotting meat and rats, hung in the cool air.
"Hello!" Bellamy called. His voice echoed through the building. "Is anybody here?"
No one replied.
"Let's look around," said Astarte. To his surprise, she took his hand and tugged him toward the doorway on the left. He considered extricating his fingers from her grip, but then thought better of it. Perhaps, for all her bravado, she needed the reassurance of the contact, and at least she wasn't restraining his shooting hand.
Beyond the arch was a parlor full of antique furniture dominated by a towering sculpture in the center of the floor. The construct was a twisted mass of junk: crushed fenders, bent, rusty nails, razor blades, flatware, and unidentifiable scraps of metal welded into a double helix. The component parts gleamed dully in the wan gray light.
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