“There is no salvation from the devil.”
“No, Father Benedict. I am serious. If you wish ‘salvation’, as you call it, let me make a proposal.”
“Never.”
“Where is the famed logic of your order? Listen first, then answer. To begin, you must understand that tonight you will die. Your uncivilised behaviour before our Meeting makes your death a necessity. Do you understand?”
The Jesuit had no reaction.
“What we have left to deal with then, is the manner of your death. It could be easy and clean, and delayed long enough for you to complete whatever rites of contrition you think necessary. No doubt your god will greet you at the gates of heaven. Or else, I could give you to them.” Diego gestured to the others seated behind the table. “And you would the in a manner that I’m sure you’d find repugnant. And then, Father Benedict, after you had died, I would chain you in a small cell below us. And each night I would stand by the door and listen to you rage and bellow against the thirst. And Priest, believe me, it is a terrible thirst. Then, when you could stand it no more, I would send in children. Do you understand, Father Benedict? The blessed innocents would walk in to give themselves up to you, and you will rend them and consume them until you are sated and full of shame. Then I shall chain you again in the midst of the ruin of their bodies, and we shall all wait until the thirst returns and we do it again and again and again. Throughout eternity, Father Benedict. Eternity. Do you understand?”
The Jesuit’s face was pale. “No,” he whispered. “Please, no.” The mumbled prayers had stopped.
“It’s very simple to avoid. Tell us why you staged the attack at the English airport. Tell us why you involved the British soldiers. A few questions. A few simple answers. And the pain will stop. We’ll give you a small injection. You’ll last long enough for us to deliver you to another who can give you your last rites, if that’s what concerns you. You can confess everything. Your god will understand. The flesh is weak. He knows. He forgives.” Diego’s voice was almost calm, almost reassuring, then he dropped it to a dry hissing whisper. “But he’ll never forgive the children, Priest. Never.”
The Jesuit was silent, unmoving. He stood only because the familiars held him so tightly.
Diego held up a talon. “Madeline. My patience is gone. He is yours.”
A woman rose from behind the table and came toward Father Benedict. Her mouth was wide. Her lips were moist and her mouth was gaping. The fangs within glistened.
“You already know why we’re after St. Clair,” the Jesuit said, looking at Diego in desperation.
“Of course we know already,” Diego lied easily, convincingly. He motioned Madeline to stay back. “You won’t be telling us anything new. You won’t be betraying anyone. Confirm it for us, and you shall have peace.”
“The final war is coming.” The Jesuit’s voice was weak.
“Armageddon?” Diego seemed amused. “Again?”
“The signs are there. It has been foretold.”
“Forgive me, Priest, but you’re babbling. Has there been a rapture? Has the anti-christ announced himself? Have there been more stars over Bethlehem?”
“You are all of you the Antichrist. The forces of darkness are combining. The threat grows. The End Days are here.”
For an instant, Diego was chilled. Could the Jesuits have heard about the yber’s Final Plan? Is that what drove them? The Jesuits were superstitious fools. The Bible spoke of such a conflict and in each generation the wise among them decided theirs was the time in which it would come to pass. But still it worried him. Perhaps St. Clair knew. Perhaps she had already contacted the Jesuits.
“What forces of darkness do you see combining, Priest? Tell us who our allies are against you.”
“This country rises from the Pit to join you. The beast rises from the west.”
“What do you mean, ‘this country’?”
“The United States. We know that Adrienne St. Clair is your contact with Washington. It can only mean you are to combine and the power of this nation will be subverted to destruction. To damnation.”
Diego sputtered on the word. “Washington? We are ‘combining’ with the Americans? What nonsense are you speaking?” He grabbed Father Benedict by his neck. The talons dug deep. “Who told you this? How?” Diego glanced frantically back over his shoulder to assess the others. All looked as confused as he.
“Contact has been observed. You cannot convince me otherwise. These are the End Days.”
Diego squeezed harder. “They are the end days, Priest. For you. Now tell me how you know this or you shall be sucking the innocent blood of children before the moon changes.
The Jesuit was gasping, his face turning purple from the unrelenting pressure. “Word comes from Rome. St. Clair must be stopped. At all costs. Must be…”
Diego released his grip.
“From Rome? Rome wants St. Clair stopped at all costs? Because she is representing the Conclave to Washington?”
“Yes.”
“Es increible.” Diego turned away from him. “Madeline, take the poor fool from his misery.”
Madeline moved in front of the Jesuit. Her slender, taloned fingers stroked gently across his blood-drenched face. She brought the coated fingers to her mouth and slowly, deeply sucked on them. Her eyes held him. Father Benedict shouted, “The injection. You said I would be spared this. The Last Rites. You promised me.”
Diego resumed his seat in the middle of the table. He bared his fangs in a smile. “Look into the eyes of Hell, Father Benedict. Look deeply, and you will see yourself.”
Madeline pulled on the simple white shift she wore. It floated down around her feet. She stood naked before the Jesuit. Her body was the perfect form of just awakening womanhood, and had been for more than eighty years.
“Nous connaissons ce que vous revez,” she whispered to him, and reached out her moistened hand to his groin. And the Jesuit, his body old and torn, facing the demons he had fought from afar for the fifty years he served the Holy Father, God have mercy, he responded to her touch. The power of the yber reached into him, shaming him. She squeezed at his hardness, pressed her body tightly against him, and forced his bloody mouth to her own. Her fangs cut deeply into his lips and he felt her suck upon him, felt the constrictions as she hungrily swallowed, the constrictions of her hand as she pulled upon him. Her lips trailed blood from his mouth as she moved across him.
“We know what you dream,” she whispered into his ear, her breath hot, exciting him more. Her fangs sliced into the soft flesh of his ear lobe. She moved further down.
The Jesuit, his voice a feeble murmur, said, “Oh God, oh yes.” And then she had entered his neck and he spurted into her as she sucked and swallowed and filled herself with him. And when she was sated the others took her place.
Father Benedict’s body lay crumpled and empty on the floor of the meeting room. He was drained before he could share in their special Communion. He would not rise again. Ellen, the last of the creatures to fall upon him, stepped back from him, a red flush shining out from the pallor of her cheeks.
“So, Ellen, what do you make of his rantings?” Diego had not partaken. He had been deep in thought while the others attended the priest.
“Insane,” said Ellen. “They are all insane.” She wiped at a dribble of the Jesuit’s blood at the corner of her mouth.
“Of course,” agreed Diego. “But whatever their reasons, which in truth I cannot understand, they seem as determined to kill St. Clair as we are. It would be a shame to waste such holy dedication.”
“What are you thinking?” asked Madeline. Still naked, she sprawled back in a chair, her body relaxed and languorous. She was gorged.
“I think a message to Rome is in order. We’ll use this priest’s name and tell them where St. Clair has landed. It should be a few nights, at least, before they miss him. And just in case Mr. King’s human is not as capable as he appears to be, we shall even tell them that the human is one of h
er familiars.” Diego smiled. Everything was falling into place perfectly. “Then we shall be saved the bother of eliminating him ourselves and with the Jesuits so inexperienced in these matters, it’s bound to be a messy affair. It shall be amusing to see how they contrive to stay out of the humans’ newscasts.”
The others joined in Diego’s amusement. The Jesuits were such fools.
“And then,” said Diego, “all that remains is to find out why they think there is a connection between St. Clair and Washington.” And to find out if she knows about the Final Plan, he thought.
“Couldn’t she have contacted them?” asked Ellen. “Wouldn’t they have the facilities she was seeking?”
“No, she wouldn’t trust them. She would be afraid of their military and the uses they might have for her. No, I’m certain of it. She would not contact them.” Unless she knew what the Conclave planned.
“Would they have somehow contacted her?” The question was unthinkable but Diego was glad Madeline had asked it.
“For the sake of the Conclave, it cannot be true. But that is what we must find out.” Or had the Americans, with all their industry and science, stumbled upon it for themselves? That could explain it. They knew the horrible future waiting for them. They saw St. Clair as an ally. And she would be. Alone among the yber and the humans of the world, she could destroy the Final Plan, preserve the humans’ future.
Diego waved his hand to the larger of his two familiars. The youth began to unwrap the black cloth from his neck as he approached his mentor.
First Lord Diego would feed. And then he would arrange the message to Rome. It must be a message which could not be misunderstood. It must enrage them. The Conclave must stop St. Clair at all costs. Even if it meant somehow collaborating with their hated enemies the Jesuits.
She could destroy everything, Diego thought as his fangs slipped into the willing flesh of his familiar.
I wonder if she knows that?
The blood was warm and satisfying. He thought of the message he would send the Jesuits.
And he knew it would enrage.
Chapter Eight
MAJOR ANTHONY WESTON, United States Army, examined the documents and photographs on his desk without really seeing them. He knew there were other, more pressing matters to attend to, but an immobilising inertial block made him sit at his desk, unable to begin anything new, until the phone call came that would tell him that the location had been determined.
With a great effort of will, he forced himself to at least straighten up his desk. He began to slide the papers back into their grey metal file container. For the last time he looked at the glossy eight-by-tens of the three hundred and forty rats that had been suffocated by a rapid rise in temperature in their lab at Berkeley. They were meaningless to him. He had far worse things on his conscience than the deaths of rats.
Washington D.C., January 16
Included in the documents was a photocopy of his letter, refusing a reallocation of funds to enable the experiment to be restarted. He knew that he would have to answer to that young doctor he had had placed at the Haaberling Institute (he couldn’t remember his name), but that would come later. The experiment had been stopped. That was all that mattered for now.
Weston looked far older than his years. Since he had been assigned the directorship, he had aged incredibly under the strain. This is what happens to presidents, he thought. They enter the Oval Office, eyes bright, laces fresh, and then the briefings begin. The quiet, sombre men begin to call. They whisper their secrets to their new commander, and in months the burden shows. Conditions and situations the quiet men have dealt with for years enter the presidents lives in moments. In four years they age ten. Nothing would ever be the same for any of them. But Weston had never been in the Oval Office. There were some secrets in Washington which could not be trusted to someone whose power rested in his appeal to the people. That kind of power base was too unstable. The real power of the government was not subject to such transitory conditions. Weston and his people held their secrets alone.
He locked the documents in the container. Their classification would be non-existent. They would never be filed where someone not connected with Weston and the Nevada Project could get at them.
Weston stared at his office wall, thinking about the fragmentation that was growing through Washington like cracks on thin ice. So many pieces floating away on their own. How many files like His were there in that city? What other unimaginable secrets were hidden away under only one key because no one could trust the central filing systems? Sometimes, late at night when sleep eluded him, he found himself thinking that perhaps there was another project like his operating out there. A project just as shrouded in secrecy so that no others knew their work was being duplicated, but a project different from his. That other project would have the answer.
Weston knew it was a dangerous thought, and he knew what was behind it.
He had been forced down too many blind alleys. He had had to order too many repugnant solutions. Hasty, panicked, murderous. Some solutions had been easily bought. Like the young doctor with the rats who had ended up in Stockholm. He had not even known he was being bought off and his experiment stopped. But some of the others, the older ones especially, who could not be easily dazzled and diverted, were much more stubborn. Fatal car accidents were being arranged in an almost regular manner. The loss to the country’s scientific potential was enormous, especially now that it was so desperately needed. The moral cost was something Weston had stopped thinking of long ago.
With the directorship had come the understanding that certain actions were to be considered necessary in the extreme. Years ago, he had accepted that. Everything flowed from that decision. Recently, that decision had been coming more and more to mind, but he kept thrusting it from him. Now was not the time to reconsider.
He coughed. The pain seared through him, making him tense up. His deeply etched, lined face contorted. He was alone in his office so he was allowed that. Never before his people. The pain settled to a dull ache in his chest. He resisted the urge to cough again. It was after him all right. He had gone after it, but it had zeroed in on him first. The country wasn’t the only thing running out of time. At least he wouldn’t be around to see it end. He would be spared that agony. And out of everything he had been faced with in the last fourteen years, that thought was the one thing that really scared him. It would end.
But not today. Today his lungs worked and the country was secure in its ignorance. In a matter of weeks that security would inevitably erode and crumble and he would be forced to go to someone. Certainly not the President. Certainly not anyone he could think of. Everything hung poised and motionless waiting for his phone to ring.
Eventually, it did.
Weston’s agent on the other end gave the location.
“The contact is Leung. She’s in Toronto.”
Weston’s mind broke free of the stagnation of waiting.
If she had contacted the primed doctors in Washington or Chicago or any of the other major American cities, it would have been the end of it. The field was far too open and she would be dead before the proper arrangements could be negotiated. But Canada meant there was a chance the Nevada Project could be first. His mind raced with the possibilities.
He spoke quickly. “How soon can we have a team operating there? Can we get a consular expedience order to bring in the Mounties?’
His agent responded. “We’ve got Davis up there now making the final negotiations with Leung. Davis is sure he’s going to co-operate fully. Everyone will be in place for the first moves tonight. Davis says not to bring in the Mounties.” The agent paused, wondering how much he could say even over a secure line. “Someone’s already brought them in.”
Weston had half-expected that, but still he was surprised. Rome had also made the location. The others wouldn’t have bothered with the Mounties. But how had they done it?
His men would now be operating in a friendly nation without sanc
tion. But a diplomatic incident would only bring it all to a head a few weeks earlier. There was, in the end, nothing to lose.
“Set up for surveillance and protection. I’ll be there within twenty-four hours for the initial contact.” There was a silence.
“Jack,” Weston said finally, calling the agent by his first name. “This is it, you know. There’s nothing else.”
“We’ll do it,” was all the agent said. The line went dead.
Weston switched to another line and began to make his travel arrangements.
Everything rested on this last effort.
If they failed, nothing else would matter, ever again.
Chapter Nine
THE PLANE WAS half-empty and Helman sat alone in his row by a window, staring sightlessly out over the night darkened water. The flight from LaGuardia was almost over. The atrocity he must commit would soon begin.
They had told him his victim’s name and then they had told him little else. What Adrienne St. Clair had done to them, what one person could possibly do to them which would make them react this way, he had no way of knowing. He could only guess that her actions had been devastating, because the conditions of this closing were the most vicious he had ever agreed to.
“An example must be made, Mr. Helman,” one of the black-masked ones had said. “She has gone from our ways onto another path, and any who might be tempted to follow her must know what reward is waiting. The conditions must be met exactly!” The last had been a hiss, like an animal spitting its rage, and Helman had felt the first tendrils of a nightmare disorientation; an intense feeling that things were somehow wrong, like some cloudy manifestation from the pit of his mind. Those people could not be real.
The No Smoking/Fasten Seatbelt light chimed on in the cabin and Helman returned to the present as he watched the lights of the city grow closer. The plane banked and began its descent. He wondered if it would somehow be better this time if it crashed.
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