Hushed.
Expectant.
The moon hung low on the horizon, looming there as if poised on the edge of a long drop. Since it was early in its ascension, it filled the sky, a vast ball of incandescence that punched a hole in the night’s blackness.
Standing on his balcony, the smooth flagstones beneath his feet damp from the evening’s chill and glistening with the silvery blue light of the moon, Hudson Blake gazed out into that darkness, watchful and vigilant.
As he watched the darkness, he felt it watching him in return.
He sensed it was hungry.
Turning away, he reentered his study through the set of French doors that led to the balcony, and crossed the room, picking up the withered journal that lay open on his desk. The book’s leather binding was stiff and laced with cracks, its pages fragile, yellow with age and neglect.
He read aloud the entry written on the open page.
"To summon the Beast, one must make a true and worthy sacrifice. An offering of that which is most precious to the denizens of the pit must be made swiftly and without hesitation. Once the blood has been shed, if ye are of sound mind and valor, you must take up the Bloodstone in both hands, cupping it between the palms, with the left hand, the Hand of Vengeance, above the right, the Hand of Righteousness. Repeating the words of the unholy incantation contained herein, reach out with the very essence of your now damned soul and call forth that which you desire."
He’d read that passage more than a hundred times, and the words fell from his lips with the ease of long familiarity.
Having made a substantial study of ancient, mystical traditions, Hudson dismissed most of the text as bullshit. Such rituals were mainly for show, to bolster the performer’s image in the eyes of the uninitiated.
But as the best lies often contain a kernel of truth, so too did the description of the ritual contain the clues needed to bring it to its proper fruition. And in this instance, Blake was certain he had correctly identified them.
The remarks about the crystal were the key.
Carefully laying the book back onto the desk, Hudson reached up under the collar of the shirt he wore and removed the necklace that was hanging about his neck. The dark stone that dangled on the end of the chain spun in the air like a pendulum, sending off tiny flashes of crimson whenever it was touched by the room’s light.
This was the crystal to which the journal had been referring.
The Bloodstone.
He stared at it now, wondering as always where his ancestor, Sebastian had obtained it. Years earlier he’d shown it to several prominent jewelers. None of them had been able to identify the type of stone or its country of origin. Ever since, it had held a particular fascination for him and he’d often gaze at it for long periods of time, attempting to unlock its secrets.
What he did understand was that it was the stone itself, not the ritual or its flowery incantations that would allow him to communicate with the beast his ancestor had known as Moloch.
He held it up to the lamp, shining the light on its ruby surface. Deep inside the stone, he thought he could see movement.
His eyes narrowed as he looked closer.
There! Something had shifted position deep within its depths.
But what?
While he yearned for the answers, he knew they were really not all that important. Only what the stone would allow him to do was.
He leaned over the desk and reread the vital line in the journal.
"…reach out with the very essence of your soul and call forth that which you desire."
At first, the line had confused him. How does one reach out with the essence of his soul? But after a time he came to realize that he was seeking a deeper meaning than necessary, that the words needed to be taken in the literal sense. Medieval writers had seen the mind and the soul as one, so the passage was actually referring to the mind. Thus reaching out with his soul really meant reaching out with his mind.
He believed that somehow the crystal channeled his thought patterns, much the same way as an antenna will channel radio signals.
All that he had to do to reach Moloch was think about him.
It should be that simple.
He’d tried it before however, without success. His failure with the stone and his inability to find the hidden vault had caused him to dismiss the entire legend of his ancestor’s winged familiar as so much fantasy.
But now that the vault had been found, he was convinced that the journal’s contents were true.
Maybe it was my doubt all along that prevented the connection.
The discovery of the body in the basement of Stonemoor had added fuel to the flames of his beliefs, and after getting all the information from Caruso that he could, he decided that there was only one possible explanation.
The journal was true; the beast did exist.
And with the death of that vandal, it seemed to have returned to the world after hiding itself for so long.
Not that he cared about the fool who had been killed, that wasn’t important. What was important was the fact that at last he’d be able to prove the family legends that had intrigued him all of his adult life. The end of his search was finally in sight.
His fingers itched to seize the power in their bony grasp.
He first learned of the beast’s existence when he’d found the journal years before, hidden in a niche in the fireplace in one of the mansion’s unused rooms. Upon reading it, Hudson scoffed at the information it contained, but later found himself irresistibly drawn back to its musty, yellowed pages again and again, his mind alight with the possibilities he saw there. It was in the journal that he also learned of his ancestor’s pact with the Beast, and the awesome powers it employed for him. Dreaming of possessing such knowledge for himself, he set about to learn if what the journal contained was true.
Tonight he would finally know.
It was time to begin.
Holding the crystal in one hand by its slim gold chain, he moved to the center of the room.
On the floor at his feet rested a number of objects. Considering what he was about to do, he decided to take certain precautions.
Blake was not a deeply religious man and never had been. When he was younger he scoffed at the idea of God and his army of heavenly hosts. Likewise, if there was no God, then there was no Satan, and no demonic army with which to corrupt man from the salvation that supposedly awaited him.
As he’d grown older, he discovered the power that a religious leader can hold over his followers, particularly religions of a darker nature. He joined one after another, studying the craft, learning from those above him before ruthlessly replacing them, taking their power for his own. All those years had slowly but surely convinced him that there was some truth to what the leaders preached. He had become convinced that there was another realm of reality separate from our own, which could be tapped into with the right methods. It didn’t matter what you called it; the supernatural realm, the astral plane, the Other Side, whatever. It was there. Waiting to be made use of. Of that he was certain. Once he made this concession, it was only a short step to believe that this other realm was populated by beings of which we have little knowledge. Hudson felt it was through encounters with creatures from the Other Side that led man to invent religion. After all, what is religion but the attempt to explain that which man fears and doesn’t understand?
Although he still scoffed at the old rituals with their trappings of mysticism and their elaborate schemes to protect the summoner from the very powers he sought to invoke, he did not abandon them entirely. After all, what if there was some validity to them? Could he take the chance and leave himself vulnerable to the very creature he sought to summon and harness for his own use?
No.
That would be foolish and Hudson Blake was anything but a foolish man.
He replaced the crystal around his neck so that he would have both hands free. Shedding the long, black robe he was wearing, he carefully folded it and laid it aside.
He took up a small clay bowl in both hands and moved to the open floor space immediately in front of the French doors.
He held the bowl upright in front of him at arm’s length as if in silent supplication, remaining that way for several long moments.
Lowering his arms, he dipped his left hand inside and took up a handful of the fine white salt that filled the bowl. He knelt on one knee and slowly began to let the mixture fall from his grasp to form a smooth, unbroken line on the floor. Once his hand was empty he repeated the process, inching backward as he went, bit by little bit, until a circle eight feet in diameter was laid out around him.
Satisfied, he stepped out of the circle, carefully avoiding making contact with the powder so its integrity as an unbroken circle would remain intact, and returned to the small pile of objects a few feet away.
Bending, he picked up a small cage and a leather wrapped parcel of considerable length. A large black cat lay curled inside the cage and hissed warily as he lifted the cage, watching him with liquid green eyes that accused without words.
Blake grinned.
He hated cats. Always had. He went out of his way to use them in his rituals, taking a sadistic delight in ridding the world of as many of the foul little beasts as he could. With the two objects in hand, he reentered the circle, again carefully stepping over the boundary, and moved to the center, setting the cage at his feet.
He unwrapped the second object, tossing the covering it had been wrapped in outside the circle. The sword swept free of its scabbard with a soft reptilian hiss, and the sound of the steel scraping against the leather sent the blood quickening in his veins. This was the part of the ritual he liked best, and so he waited a few minutes, letting the anticipation he was feeling build until it was a raging river surging against the mental damn of his will.
When the time was right, when his excitement had reached the proper fevered pitch, he straightened and raised the weapon aloft.
Naked, with the moonlight rippling across the silver blue steel of the blade and a light breeze stirring the edges of his hair like the touch of unseen phantom fingers, Hudson Blake began to sing.
The song started as a low murmur, the sound of the wind whispering through the river reeds, but it built with power as he went, getting louder, stronger, until it grew into the roar of a thousand voices all crying out at once.
In the midst of this, he withdrew the cat from its cage. It hissed and spat at him, scratching his forearm with its claws, but he ignored the attacks. He made certain he had a firm grip beneath its forelegs and then held it out at arms-length, away from his body, still singing all the while.
He drew the sword over his shoulder until he could feel the soft kiss of the blade against the bare flesh of his lower back.
Suddenly, abruptly, he stopped singing.
The silence was thick with tension, the air in the room seeming heavier than when he’d begun, filled now with a vibrant energy.
The cat met his gaze with its own.
Understanding passed between them.
The sword came whistling down, cutting through the air with an eerie shriek.
The cat’s severed head fell at Blake’s feet with a soft, wet sound.
Blood sprayed from the stump of its neck; a hot crimson fountain that splashed Hudson’s face and upper body.
Moving quickly, he held the sword beneath the cat’s upended corpse, turning it like a spit on a barbecue so that the entire blade was covered with blood before the river stopped. When the blood ceased to flow, he tossed the corpse across the room.
With the dripping blade he unhesitatingly traced a pentagram inside the boundaries of the circle he had created earlier. According to custom, as long as he remained inside the symbol he would be safe from harm.
Not being the type to risk everything on one toss of the dice however, Blake stepped clear of the circle and retrieved the last object he’d left on the floor. The Smith and Wesson felt satisfyingly heavy in his hands.
He hoped he wouldn’t have to use it.
Returning to the circle, Blake laid the pistol down between his feet. With his other hand he thrust the sword point-first into the floor in front of him so that it stood upright without any support.
He knelt and meditated for several moments, clearing his mind of all extraneous thought.
When he was ready he reached up, cupped the Bloodstone between both palms, and called out with his mind into the dark night, summoning the beast to his side.
Chapter Fifteen: A Witness in the Dark
On the other side of town, something stirred.
He awakened slowly, ponderously, like a dragon aroused from its enchanted slumber.
He blinked his yellow, cat-like eyes, once, twice, three times.
A voice was calling to him in his mind, a voice he didn’t recognize.
If it had been the old man, he simply would have ignored it, having already decided he would deal with the old fool when the time was right. But this wasn’t the Elder, nor one of his own kind.
So who then?
As far as he knew, the old man and he were the only survivors of the Age of Creation.
Therefore, it had to be a human.
The notion filled him with mild amusement.
Curious, he closed his eyes and relaxed, sloughing off the earthly restraints imposed on his body, sending his awareness soaring out into that dark realm that separates this world from the next; that place out of time, out of space, where the physical laws of reality no longer have any meaning.
In that realm he was free to travel wherever he willed and he used the summons as a beacon, honing in on it, following it to its source.
What he saw there surprised and delighted him.
It also aroused his hunger.
Taking to the sky, he headed in that direction.
*** ***
In her dream, Katelynn was standing in the cemetery.
It was late at night.
The moon was hanging in the sky, a baleful eye in the darkness. Its cold blue light touched the edges of the gravestones around her, sending their long, solemn shadows across the dew-wet grass in perfect rank and file, reminding her of an army standing watchful and still.
A grim, motionless army.
The air was heavy with their silence.
Feeling this silence all about her, Katelynn grew afraid.
Without knowing why, she began to run, slipping in and out between the gravestones as she raced desperately across the wet grass. Her heart was thumping wildly and the need to scream rose dangerously in her throat.
She managed to stifle it in time, knowing that if she let it loose that he would hear her.
That thought startled her and brought her up short in her headlong flight to lean against the nearest tombstone.
"He’ll hear me?" she asked herself, with a moment’s rational thought. "Who will hear me?"
She didn’t know. But she did know he was there.
Behind her. In the darkness.
Coming for her.
She had to get away!
A whimper of fear escaped her lips as she pushed away from the headstone and began running again.
The silence behind her changed; became the silence of fear, thick and lazy.
The air grew colder.
She had the unmistakable feeling he was closer now, relentlessly closing the distance between them, and she glanced around frantically, knowing he was out there but unable to find him.
And then she fell.
*** ***
The night grew still.
Even the trees seemed to be holding their breath, standing immobile, frozen in place.
The light breeze that had been blowing moments before suddenly died.
The crickets stopped their singing.
From where he knelt in the middle of the floor, Hudson Blake opened his eyes and looked around the room.
He was alone.
But he didn’t expect to remain that way for long.
The beas
t was coming…
The feeling that someone was nearby, watching, struck him suddenly, and he instinctively cringed, reacting to the presence on a primal level, animalistically aware of the nearness of danger.
Coming…coming…coming…
His mind screamed at him to run but he remained where he was, believing he was safe as long as he stayed within the confines of the protective circle he’d created. He grasped the stone tighter between his hands, his knuckles leeched white from the effort, and repeated the name again and again in his mind, calling out to him.
Moloch�
Moloch�
Moloch�
Abruptly, he realized he was no longer alone.
The warmth of life slowly seeped from his frame as he saw the shadow that fell on the wooden floor, the shadow of the large hulking beast that crouched on his balcony rail, its wings swept wide in the moonlight.
Blake could only mutely stare as icy terror swept over him with the swiftness of a cyclone, but it was too late for thoughts of escape.
Moloch had arrived.
*** ***
The dream shifted, wavered, and then coalesced.
No longer in the cemetery, she found herself standing on a railing. Behind her a thirty foot drop over the balcony stretched away to the ground below. A pair of open French doors faced her, and through them she could see an older man kneeling naked in the middle of the floor. His chest and face were stained with a dark, crimson crust.
Dried blood, she realized, as its tangy aroma reached her nostrils. Her mouth twisted into a wide, cruel grin.
Her tongue flicked forward, caressing her upper incisors, feeling their length and sharpness.
What the hell? a distant part of her mind wondered.
A voice not her own spoke, and a chill ran up and down her spine at the icy menace in its words.
"Give me the stone," it said.
A hand, her own but not her own, reached forward and uncurled its fist.
She saw with growing horror that it wasn’t human.
There were only four fingers, each one tipped with a razor sharp claw, and when they curled into the palm and back out again, gesturing, she heard them clicking together like the rasp of steel on steel.
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