And then, for the briefest flicker of time, he saw what lay far back in their depths.
With a bellow like an angry bear’s, he wrenched himself free from the suddenly clutching hands, threw her from him, staggered back. His jaw went slack with horror as she swiftly bloated, hair dissolving into a limp, dripping mass, eyes filming over to the flat lifeless orbs of the drowned. For the first time since the war, he felt the cold sickening tug of his testicles trying to retract into his belly.
“Murderer,” she whispered in a voice that came from the ocean floor.
Then she was gone.
For a measureless time he stood, jerking with violent shudders; imagining the voices in the night, the laughter in his mind, the invisible bodies in the wind whipping around him. His fingers burned cold from touching her. Weakly, he struggled against the urge to abandon all and throw himself back into the ravine, to run wildly down the mountain to lights and the company of men.
He started walking toward the ruin.
As he approached the entrance archway the sense of menace thickened around him like fog; the voices in the air changed from mocking to threatening. Around the corner ahead he heard a faint hissing noise. There was no knowing what it might be.
“Help me,” he whispered, and stepped around the corner.
A long hopeless moan arose out of the gloom, along with the clank of chains. The hissing came from a brazier full of coals. Iron rods and pincers rested in them, glowing bright-hot red. A single hooded figure bent over the brazier. In amazement, Boudrie stared at the men chained to the wall. Christ! There were Blancard, Pelissier, Lestraux, all his brothers-in-arms from that night at Vezey-le-Croux. The faces were horrible, contorted with pain and despair. Opening his mouth to call to them, Boudrie moved forward to their aid.
Then the hooded figure straightened up and turned, a glowing iron rod clasped in a thick glove. As he held it up, it illuminated his face.
And Boudrie recognized Augustin Marichal, his old master at the Grand Seminaire, the man among men he had admired to the point of worship, had known to be a living saint. The old man’s eyes burned with the fire of the coals, his smile was twisted and gloating. He gestured with the blazing iron to a place on the wall where an empty set of manacles hung, waiting.
Boudrie was whirling away when the place exploded in flame. Burning bodies plunged from the windows of a fiery barn, shrieking, writhing, clutching at him. Their fingers flamed, their agonized faces were desperate with hate, and Boudrie heard his own voice screaming, “Jesus, mercy!”
The flames vanished, leaving only the cool wind, and the obscene gibbering voices. He fell back against the stone wall and put his hand over his eyes. “No more,” he whispered. “I can bear no more.”
He heaved himself off the wall and lunged into the fortress.
A small fire burned at the altar, illuminating three shapes. McTell stood stiffly, chanting in a strange harsh tongue. Something glinted in his hand. Behind him stood a taller figure hidden in shadow. The crumpled form on the altar could only be Alysse.
Slowly, the tall figure raised a gauntleted hand and pointed at Boudrie. A whistle rose, a high, thin mournful sound with a quality of infinite dark distance.
The fourth figure appeared suddenly, as if from nowhere. It was wrapped in a dark hooded robe, coming fast, its grotesquely short limbs reaching. The hair on Boudrie’s neck stood straight up. For the longest, worst instant of his life, he hung on the edge of flight.
Then he threw open his arms and charged.
At the instant of impact, a terrific cold stopped Boudrie’s breath. His hands closed on the coarse hairy robe, something horribly wet and sharp ripped at his chest—
And then the creature’s head jerked up, throwing back the hood.
Boudrie cried out, a cry that echoed through his mind as he fell and fell and fell, until at last he reached a place where the face he had seen could come after him no longer, where he was safe from the heart of evil.
At the altar, the man who was John McTell raised the knife slowly. Reflected firelight danced along the blade from the shaking of his hand.
CHAPTER 16
Most of an hour had passed, and Melusine waited beside the glass door, her eyes ceaselessly scanning the dark slope of Montsevrain, the silhouette of the ruin that came and went with the passing of the clouds over the moon. She had seen nothing. An hour was perhaps time enough for them to be back, if Boudrie had been wrong, if it was a false alarm. But it could as easily be all night—or never. The candles were half-gone, and she realized with growing anxiety that if they burned much further, she would have to begin prowling the closets and cellar in search of the fuse box. The thought was unbearable. For the hundredth time, she forced herself to calm.
Suddenly she gasped. Two figures were climbing the steps: a man with his arm around someone—a woman, a girl, Alysse! She was safe, but moving slowly, and pale even in the moonlight. Overjoyed, Melusine threw open the door. The man’s face lifted sharply at the sound. Though she could not see him well, it had to be McTell.
“Bonsoir, monsieur,” she called. “Please don’t be angry. I’ll explain who I am and what I’m doing in your house.”
He said nothing, but guided Alysse across the patio to the door. Melusine stepped aside uneasily; his walk was heavy, forced. Then she saw that his face and shirt were soaked, a rich dark red in the candlelight.
“But you’re hurt! Come, let me help.” She took Alysse’s hand and almost dropped it; it was as cold as if it had been in a refrigerator. The girl was wearing nothing but a black slip and a heavy red scarf around her neck. Melusine looked anxiously into her eyes. They were dark and blank. What in God’s name was going on? With anger rising swiftly to temper her relief, she made the girl sit in a chair and turned to McTell.
“We must get you help, monsieur,” she said. “My husband should be back soon. And then I think you have some explaining to do.”
To her amazement, he laughed—a harsh deep croaking sound without a trace of real mirth. “I shall explain to thee, woman, fear not.”
The voice was cold and hard as iron, and though he spoke in French, it was French such as she had never heard, the French of centuries ago.
He stepped forward, the candlelight illuminating his face clearly for the first time. One eye held a glare of triumph. The other was bleared and dead. Blood streaked his mouth, chin, chest, and he raised his hands for her to see; they, too, were stained and glistening. One of them clasped a dark leather-bound book. “Do you not recognize the drowned man?”
“Oh, God,” she whispered. She took a step back.
“Do not allow yourself the luxury of hope.” His voice was soft and creeping now, velvet-covered steel. “The priest is gone, to the realm of lost souls. He chose to play with a pet of mine. Your stupid husband yet thrashes through the brush, led astray by my servants. I toyed with his death; but better to let him live with his grief. It is you I want, madame: you, who thought to command me; you, who wished to keep me from what is mine.”
He made a sudden imperious gesture. Alysse rose and walked dreamlike to stand by his side. His hand rested possessively on her shoulder. “I would have destroyed you long ago, had I not hungered for this moment. In my youth I was rash, but I have learned to wait. At last the sin of a priest and the weakness of a scholar put occasion in my way. How carefully I lured that fool!”
Her voice came out a faint whisper: “What have you done with him?”
For the briefest of instants, both eyes lit up, and an altogether different being looked out of them—terrified, agonized, lost. Then he was gone. “Have you not heard of the wages of sin?” the voice said mockingly.
Then the face went hard, ferocious. “We must say farewell, madame. Would that I could stay and tend to you, but I must leave that to my servants. Not again will I risk freedom, even for the pleasure you would bring me. This world is new; until I know it well, I will remain in secrecy. Your husband will think this night’s work was the
doing of a madman, and none other will ever tell the tale.”
“Leave the girl,” Melusine said hoarsely. “I have lived my life. But leave her.”
His smile widened, dark and malevolent.
“Show her, my love,” he whispered.
Slowly, dreamily, Alysse’s fingers moved to untie the scarf around her neck. One end fell against her breast with a small wet sound; and Melusine finally understood that it was not a red scarf at all, but a once white; and that the blood soaking McTell was not his own. She swayed, gripping the table for support.
“Adieu, madame, we have far to travel tonight. Take comfort in the knowledge that you and I will never meet again.” Arm around Alysse, he turned and walked with his heavy gait out into the night.
For moments Melusine stood, unable to move, fingernails digging into her palms. Then from the kitchen came the distinct sound of a door opening.
A shadow, dim in the flickering light, appeared through the archway into the hall. A woman’s sweep of hair was clearly outlined. The shape came into view, turned the corner. Melusine recognized her instantly from the photos: McTell’s wife. But something was terribly wrong with her movements.
The woman raised her face. The eyes that looked out were luminous green, thirsty with the lust to destroy—the eyes of an intelligent reptile that had a mouse safely trapped. The lips twisted in a leering smile. Melusine stared, a scream trapped in her chest, her mind racing to the brink of consciousness, while the hands of what had been Linden McTell—as if they were opening a blouse—rose to her breasts and parted the flesh.
As in a dream, Melusine felt a part of her mind take flight, unable to bear the reality of her earthbound body running clumsily, hopelessly, from the inescapable.
** ** **
Cursing steadily under his breath, Roger Devarre shoved his way through the tangled underbrush in the ravine. Scratched and bruised, half-frightened and half-angry, he broke over the top and ran for the fortress entrance. All that talk about the supernatural had been working on him, stripping raw his nerves. Several times he had imagined that he was not alone on his dark journey through the woods, that unseen hands were pushing and tripping him, that threatening not-quite-heard voices were warning him to go back. Worse, he had gotten lost; nearly fifty minutes had passed on a climb that should have taken twenty. Now the very air around the ruin seemed blacker than elsewhere, thick with an ugly tension. He thought of his wife, alone, and cursed again. How had she gotten that cut? With the Beretta held close to his thigh, he sprinted through the entrance, and stopped short.
Perhaps ten meters ahead, facedown on the ground, a big dark-clothed body lay illuminated by the moon. Twenty meters farther, the embers of a small fire cast flickering shadows. There was no one—nothing—else visible.
He dropped to his knees beside the priest, fingers reaching for a wrist. “Etien,” he said. Boudrie made no movement, no sound, but the pulse was there, slow and steady. Devarre felt carefully along the flanks for injuries, ran his fingers over neck and head; then, with an effort, turned him over.
White showed all the way around the pupils of Boudrie’s staring eyes, and his expression made Devarre turn sharply away. He took several gulps of air, forced himself to look back, and slapped the priest’s cheeks.
Nothing. He cursed himself for not having his bag, with its amyl nitrite. Then he saw the rent in the cassock. Hurriedly he felt it. The flesh was bloodied but the wound superficial.
There was nothing to be done. He stood and strode to the fire, then sucked in his breath as the flashlight beam touched the great stone slab. It was wet with blood. At its foot lay a knife, dripping crimson.
He squeezed his eyes shut, opened them again. The flashlight moved around the ruin’s interior. With that much blood, someone, or something, had died. Where was the corpse?
More important, where was the killer? The thought of the girl made him shiver.
He hurried back to Boudrie and quickly checked his pulse again. Nothing had changed. He took off his jacket, folded it into a pillow, put it under the priest’s head. Then he raised his face to the dark, windy sky. To carry the priest down was an impossibility; Boudrie weighed as much as two men. What, then? Wait with him?
With Melusine alone in the house, and a murderer on the loose?
He knelt once more to murmur, “I’m sorry, Etien, I’ll be back as soon as I can.” Then, with a new meaning of the word fear in his heart, he began to run.
** ** **
It had nearly gotten her, had gripped her hair as she yanked at the door, had tom a lock loose when she clawed at its eyes and broke free. It was very quick and strong, that thing which had once been a woman; she could never outrun it, not with her limp. She could feel it behind her now as she fled across the dark downstairs, could feel that it was leisurely in pursuit because it wanted to wring the utmost from her. It had plenty of time.
The stairwell beckoned like a dark mouth. She gripped the banister and pulled herself up, aware of the steady shuffling steps behind. The dim memory of the heavy oak dresser in the bedroom led her there. Panting, gasping, she tried to drag it back to block the door. On the thick carpeting it would not budge. She got to the other side and began to push.
A flash of gossamer moonlight through the window showed her the bedclothes. Something near the foot, beneath the covers, was squirming.
It dropped to the floor with a soft thud, dark coils writhing eagerly toward her.
The creature’s hand brushed her almost playfully as she fled out into the hall. She burst through the doors at the end and hurled them closed behind her. Panting, she got to the balcony railing and looked down: a drop of perhaps four meters, to concrete. Enough.
The silhouette was growing through the panes of glass.
The wind was fierce now, tossing the black treetops, racing the clouds like schooner ships across the moon. She turned her back to the railing and stood straight, hair whipping, as the doors opened. The shape moved slowly forward.
A sadness, a weariness vaster than anything she had ever imagined, touched the deepest part of her. She thought fleetingly of her husband, of how good her life had been. The muscles in her strong leg tensed, ready to spring her headfirst over the rail into the next world.
Abruptly, her peripheral vision was caught by a vertical streak of shimmering light, so faint it was almost nonexistent, as much in her mind as in the air. Her gaze moved sharply to follow it, but it was gone before she could focus—only to reappear instantly at the farthest edge of her sight. Another streak appeared, and then another and another, filling her mind, swelling blindingly in a great wave that washed away her senses.
Then she was in a place that was not a place, but a state of absolute stillness and clarity. Incomprehensibly, and yet beyond question, it was the culmination of being itself: the fulfillment of all her soul’s inmost yearnings, the affirmation of every doubt, the resolution of every paradox. Time is, came a voiceless understanding, time was, but time shall be no more.
She saw without seeing that the battle of the two great principles of light and darkness had never begun and had already ended, and yet would rage on forever. Its field of combat was the human soul, and the only weapon, the human will: the divine spark of true freedom. The war itself was what men called history, fought by the intelligences dimly perceived as spirits; and she understood that those not-quite-seen pillars of fire had converged to usher her to this final glimpse of truth.
The light within her faded softly, until she stood again in the stormy darkness, watching the woman-creature’s approach. The human face had altered like a living mask, revealing the demonic fury beneath. From somewhere close by Melusine heard her husband’s panicked voice shouting her name, but she did not turn. Unseen presences seemed to hover, urging her to courage, while others menaced and mocked.
Footsteps were pounding down the hallway. Devarre lunged through the doors, dropping into a crouch with the pistol aimed. “Arretez-vous, madame!” he shouted.
<
br /> Melusine’s hand rose palm-first. Devarre hesitated, and in that instant she took two firm steps, bent quickly forward, and kissed the creature on the lips.
Roger Devarre felt the hairs on the back of his neck separate and stand straight, as with a long shuddering groan, what he had thought was a living woman sank slowly to its knees and then collapsed, moonlight illuminating the rent in its chest.
CHAPTER 17
The detective in charge was named Bergerac. He was a small man with a big nose, and perhaps that, Melusine thought, explained his lack of humor.
“It appears already that we will never know precisely how Monsieur McTell disposed of his wife’s”—he looked away—“entrails—without leaving any sign. We must suppose that he buried them someplace. As to why, and why he then carried her upstairs to the balcony, we can only conjecture that he did so for the same reason he did the other things: He was insane.”
The windows of the villa’s study were filling with the gray light of dawn. Police in and out of uniform wandered through the rooms. The buzz of conversations blended with the static crackling of radios. A convoy of vehicles with flashing lights still blocked the driveway. Hours before, a team of medics had loaded the wide-eyed but still comatose Boudrie onto a helicopter. Now there remained the aftermath: the sleepless night, the thousand questions, the ebbing of adrenaline and the bone-weariness that came with it.
Bergerac lit a cigarette, looking around the room with his hard bright eyes. “But then, there are many things we probably will never understand about this tragedy. The priest, for instance. Once again, we can only conjecture.
Perhaps he was so horrified at what he had witnessed that he, too, lost his mind.”
A subordinate entered the room, bent close to Bergerac’s ear, said something in a rapid undertone, then saluted and left. He nodded sadly. “As we had feared. We cannot say for certain that the blood at the ruin was Mademoiselle Alysse’s until we find her body, but it is her type.”
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