Cabal

A FRIENDLESS FACE

Why did she have to wake? Why did there have to be a coming to? Couldn’t she just sink and sink further into the nowhere she’d taken refuge in? But it didn’t want her. She rose from it, unwillingly, and into the old pain of living and dying.

The flies had gone. That at least was something. She got to her feet, her body cumbersome; an embarrassment. As she made an attempt to dust the dirt from her clothes she heard the voice calling her name. She hadn’t woken of her own accord, it seemed. Someone had called her. For a ghastly moment, she thought the voice was Sheryl’s; that the flies had succeeded in their ambition, and driven her to lunacy. But when it came a second time she put another name to it: Babette. The child was calling her. Turning her back on the kitchen she picked up her bag and started through the debris towards the street. The light had changed since she’d made the first crossing; hours had passed while she’d debated with sleep. Her watch, broken in the fall, refused to tell how many.

It was still balmy on the street, but the heat of noon had long passed. The afternoon was winding down. It could not be long until dusk.

She began to walk, not once looking back at the restaurant. Whatever crisis of reality had overcome her there, Babette’s voice had called her from it, and she felt oddly buoyant, as though something about the way the world worked had come clear.

She knew what it was, without having to think too hard. Some vital part of her, heart or head or both, had made its peace with Midian and all it contained. Nothing in the chambers had been as agonizing as what she’d confronted in the burnt out building: the loneliness of Sheryl’s body, the stench of creeping decay, the inevitability of it all. Against that the monsters of Midian—transforming, rearranging, ambassadors of tomorrow’s flesh and reminders of yesterday’s seemed full of possibilities. Weren’t there, amongst those creatures, faculties she envied? The power to fly; to be transformed; to know the condition of beasts; to defy death?

All that she’d coveted or envied in others of her species now seemed valueless. Dreams of the perfected anatomy the soap opera face, the cent refold body had distracted her with promises of true happiness. Empty promises. Flesh could not keep its glamour, nor eyes their sheen. They would go to nothing soon.

But the monsters were forever. Part of her forbidden self. Her dark, transforming midnight self. She longed to be numbered amongst them.

There was still much she had to come to terms with; not least their appetite for human flesh, which she’d witnessed first-hand at the Sweetgrass Inn. But she could learn to understand. In a real sense she had no choice. She’d been touched by a knowledge that had changed her inner landscape out of all recognition. There was no way back to the bland pastures of adolescence and early womanhood. She had to go forward. And tonight that meant along this empty street, to see what the coming night had in store.

The idling engine of a car on the opposite side of the road drew her attention. She glanced across at it. Its windows were all wound up despite the warmth of the air—which struck her as odd. She could not see the driver; both windows and windshield were too thick with grime. But an uncomfortable suspicion was growing in her. Clearly the occupant was waiting for someone. And given that there was nobody else on the street, that someone was most likely her.

If so, the driver could only be one man, for only one knew that she had a reason to be here: Decker.

She started to run.

The engine revved. She glanced behind her. The car was moving off from its parking place, slowly. He had no reason to hurry. There was no sign of life along the street. No doubt there was help to be had, if only she knew which direction to run. But the car had already halved the distance between them. Though she knew she couldn’t outrun it, she ran anyway, the engine louder and louder behind her. She heard the tyre walls squeal against the sidewalk. Then the car appeared at her side, keeping pace with her yard for yard.

The door opened. She ran on. The car kept its companion pace, the door scraping the concrete.

Then, from within, the invitation.

“Get in.”

Bastard, to be so calm.

“Get in, will you, before we’re arrested.”

It wasn’t Decker. The realization was not a slow burn but a sudden comprehension: it wasn’t Decker speaking from the car. She stopped running, her whole body heaving with the effort of catching her breath.

The car also stopped.

“Get in,” the driver said again.

“Who… ?” she tried to say, but her lungs were too jealous of her breath to provide the words.

The answer came anyway.

“Friend of Boone’s.”

Still she hung back from the open door.

“Babette told me how to find you,” the man went on.

“Babette?”

“Will you get in! We’ve got work to do.”

She approached the door. As she did so, the man said, “Don’t scream.” She didn’t have the breath to make a sound, but she certainly had the inclination, when her eyes fell on the face in the gloom of the car. This was one of Midian’s creatures, no doubt, but not a brother to the fabulous things she’d seen in the tunnels. The man’s appearance was horrendous, his face raw and red, like uncooked liver. Had it been any other way she might have distrusted it, knowing what she knew about pretenders. But this creature could pretend nothing: his wound was a vicious honesty.

“My name’s Narcisse,” he said. “Will you shut the door please? It keeps the light out. And the flies.”

His story, or at least its essentials, took two and a half blocks to tell. How he’d first met with Boone in the hospital; how he’d later gone to Midian, and once more encountered Boone, how together they’d broken Midian’s laws, trespassing over ground. He had a souvenir of that adventure, he told her—a wound in his belly the like of which a lady should never have to set eyes upon.

“So they exiled you, like Boone?” she said.

“They tried to,” he told her. “But I hung on there, hoping I could maybe get myself a pardon. Then when the troopers came I thought: well, we brought this on the place. I should try and find Boone. Try and stop what we started.”

“The sun doesn’t kill you?”

“Maybe I’ve not been dead long enough, but no, I can bear it.”

“You know Boone’s in prison?”

“Yeah, I know. That’s why I got the child to help me find you. I’m thinking together we can get him out.”

“How in God’s name do we do that?”

“I don’t know,” Narcisse confessed. “But we’d damn well better try. And be quick about it. They’ll have people out at Midian by now, digging it up.”

“Even if we can free Boone, I don’t see what he can do.”

“He went into the Baptiser’s chamber,” Narcisse replied, his finger going to lip and heart. “He spoke with Baphomet. From what I hear nobody other than Lylesburg ever did that before, and survived. I’m figuring the Baptiser had some tricks to pass on. Something that’ll help us stop the destruction.”

Lori pictured Boone’s terrified face as he stumbled from the chamber.

“I don’t think Baphomet told him anything,” Lori said. “He barely escaped alive.”

Narcisse laughed.

“He escaped, didn’t he? You think the Baptiser would have allowed that if there hadn’t been a reason for it?”

“All right… so how do we get access to him? They’ll have him guarded within an inch of his life.”

Narcisse smiled.

“What’s so funny?”

“You forget what he is now,” Narcisse said. “He’s got powers.”

“I don’t forget,” Lori replied. “I simply don’t know.”

“He didn’t tell you?”

“No.”

“He went to Midian because he thought he’d shed blood.”

“I guessed that much.”

“He hadn’t, of course. He was guiltless. Which made him meat.”

“You mean he was attacked?”

“Almost killed. But he escaped, at least as far as the town.”

“Where Decker was waiting for him,” Lori said, finishing the story; or beginning it. “He was damn lucky that none of the shots killed him.”

Narcisse’s smile, which had more or less lingered on; his face since Lori’s remark about Boone being guarded within an inch of his life, disappeared.

“What do you mean…” he said, “… none of the shots killed him? What do you think took him back to Midian? Why do you think they opened the tombs to him the second time?”

She stared at him blankly.

“I don’t follow,” she said, hoping she didn’t. “What are you telling me?”

“He was bitten by Peloquin,” Narcisse said. “Bitten and infected. The balm got into his blood…” He stopped speaking “… You want me to go on?”

“Yes.”

“The balm got into his blood. Gave him the powers. Gave him the hunger. And allowed him to get up off the slab and go walking…”

His words had grown soft by the end of his statement, in response to the shock on Lori’s face.

“He’s dead?” she murmured.

Narcisse nodded.

“I thought you understood that,” he said. “I thought you were making a joke before… about his being…” The remark trailed into silence.

“This is too much,” Lori said. Her fist had closed on the door-handle, but she lacked the strength to pull on it. “… too much.”

“Dead isn’t bad,” Narcisse said. “It isn’t even that different. It’s just… unexpected.”

“Are you speaking from experience?”

“Yes.”

Her hand dropped from the door. Every last ounce of strength had gone from her.

“Don’t give up on me now,” Narcisse said.

Dead; all dead. In her arms, in her mind.

“Lori. Speak to me. Say something, if it’s only goodbye.”

“How… can… you joke about it?” she asked him.

“If it’s not funny, what is it? Sad. Don’t want to be sad. Smile, will you? We’re going to save lover-boy, you and me.”

She didn’t reply.

“Do I take silence as consent?”

Still she made no answer.

“Then I do.”

DRIVEN

Eigerman had only been to Midian once before, when providing back up for the Calgary force in their pursuit of Boone. It had been then that he’d met Decker who’d been the hero of that day, risking his life to try and coax his patient out of hiding. He’d failed, of course. The whole thing had ended in Boone’s summary execution as he stepped out into plain sight. If ever a man should have laid down and died, it was that man. Eigerman had never seen so many bullets in one lump of meat. But Boone hadn’t laid down. At least not stayed down. He’d gone walkabout, with no heartbeat and flesh the colour of raw fish.

Sickening stuff. It made Eigerman’s hide crawl to think of it. Not that he was about to admit that fact to anyone. Not even to his passengers on the back seat, the priest and the doctor, both of whom had secrets of their own. Ashbery’s he knew. The man liked to dress in women’s dainties, which fact Eigerman had chanced upon and used as leverage when he’d needed sanctification of a sin or two of his own. But Decker’s secrets remained a mystery. His face betrayed nothing, even to an eye as practised in the recognition of guilt as Eigerman’s.

Re-angling the mirror, the Chief looked at Ashbery, who shot him a sullen glance.

“Ever exorcize anyone?” he asked the priest.

“No.”

“Ever watch it done?”

Again, “No.”

“You do believe though,” Eigerman said.

“In what?”

“In Heaven and Hell, for Christ’s sake.”

“Define your terms.”

“Huh?”

“What do you mean by Heaven and Hell?”

“Jesus, I don’t want a fucking debate. You’re a priest, Ashbery. You’re supposed to believe in the Devil. Isn’t that right, Decker?”

The doctor grunted. Eigerman pushed a little harder.

“Everyone’s seen stuff they can’t explain, haven’t they? Especially doctors, right? You’ve had patients speaking in tongues.”

“I can’t say that I have,” Decker replied.

“Is that right? It’s all perfectly scientific, is it?”

“I’d say so.”

“You’d say so. And what would you say about Boone?” Eigerman pressed. “Is being a fucking zombie scientific too?”

“I don’t know,” Decker murmured.

“Well, will you look at this? I’ve got a priest who doesn’t believe in the Devil, and a doctor who doesn’t know science from his asshole. That makes me feel real comfortable.”

Decker didn’t respond. Ashbery did.

“You really think there’s something up ahead, don’t you?” he said. “You’re sweating a flood.”

“Don’t push, sweetheart,” Eigerman said. “Just dig out your little book of Exorcisms. I want those freaks sent back wherever the fuck they came from. You’re supposed to know how.”

“There are other explanations these days, Eigerman,” Ashbery replied. “This isn’t Salem. We’re not going to a burning.”

Eigerman turned his attention back to Decker, floating his next question lightly.

“What do you think, Doc? Think maybe we should try putting the zombie on the couch? Ask him if he ever wanted to fuck his sister?” Eigerman threw a look at Ashbery. “Or dress in her underwear?”

“I think we ate going to Salem,” Decker replied. There was an undercurrent in his voice Eigerman hadn’t heard before. “And I also think you don’t give a fuck what I believe or don’t believe. You’re going to burn them out anyway.”

“Right on,” Eigerman said, with a throaty laugh.

“And I think Ashbery’s right. You’re terrified.”

That silenced the laugh.

“Asshole,” Eigerman said quietly.

They drove the rest of the way in silence, Eigerman setting a new pace for the convoy, Decker watching the light getting frailer with every moment, and Ashbery, after a few minutes of introspection, leafing through his Book of Prayers, turning the onionskin pages at speed, looking for the Rites of Expulsion.

Pettine was waiting for them fifty yards from the necropolis gate, his face dirtied by smoke from the cars, which were still burning.

“What’s the situation?” Eigerman wanted to know.

Pettine glanced back towards the cemetery.

“There’s been no sign of movement in there since the escape. But we’ve heard stuff.”

“Like what?”

“Like we’re sitting on a termite hill,” Pettine said. “There’s things moving around underground. No doubt about that. You can feel it as much as hear it.”

Decker, who’d travelled in one of the later cars, came across and joined the debate, cutting Pettine off in mid flow to address Eigerman.

“We’ve got an hour and twenty minutes before the sun sets.”

“I can count,” Eigerman replied.

“So are we going to get digging?”

“When I say so, Decker.”

“Decker’s right, Chief,” Pettine said. “It’s sun these bastards are afraid of. I tell you, I don’t think we want to be here at nightfall. There’s a lot of them down there.”

“We’ll be here as long as it takes to clear this shit up,” said Eigerman. “How many gates are there?”

“Two. The big one, and another on the northeast side.”

“All right. So it shouldn’t be difficult to contain them. Get one of the trucks in front of the main gate, and then we’ll post men at intervals around the wall just to make sure nobody gets out. Once they’re sealed in we make our approach.”

“See you brought some insurance,” Pettine commented, looking at Ashbery.

“Damn right.”

Eigerman turned to the priest.

“You can bless water, right? Make it holy?”

“Yes.”

“So do it. Any water we can find. Bless it. Spread it amongst the men. It may do some good if bullets don’t. And you, Decker, stay out of the fucking way. This is police business now.”

Orders given, Eigerman walked down towards the cemetery gates. Crossing the dusty ground he rapidly understood what Pettine had meant by the termite hill. There was something going on below ground. He even seemed to hear voices bringing thoughts of premature burial to mind. He’d seen that once; or its consequences. Done the spadework disinterring a woman who’d been heard screaming underground. She’d had reason: she’d given birth and died in her coffin. The child, a freak, had survived. Ended up in an asylum, probably. Or here perhaps, in the earth with the rest of the motherfuckers.

If so, he could count the minutes left of his sick life on his six-fingered hand. Soon as they showed their heads Eigerman would kick them right back where they came from, bullets in their brain. So let them come. He wasn’t afraid. Let them come. Let them try and dig their way out.

His heel was waiting.

Decker watched the organization of the troops until it began to make him uneasy. Then he withdrew up the hill a little. He loathed being an observer of other men’s labour. It made him feel impotent. It made him long to show them his power. And that was always a dangerous urge. The only eyes that could stare safely at his murder-hard were eyes about to glaze and even then he had to erase them when they’d looked, for fear they told what they’d seen.

He turned his back on the cemetery and entertained himself with plans for the future. With Boone’s trial over, he’d be free to begin the Mask’s work afresh. He looked forward to that with a passion. He’d go further afield from now on. Find slaughtering places in Manitoba and Saskatchewan, or maybe over in Vancouver. He became hot with pleasure just thinking about it. From the briefcase he was carrying he could almost hear Button-Face sigh through his silver teeth.

“Hush,” he found himself telling the Mask.

“What’s that?”

Decker turned. Pettine was standing a yard from him.

“Did you say something?” the cop wanted to know.

“He’ll go to the wall,” the Mask said.

“Yes,” Decker replied.

“I didn’t hear.”

“Just talking to myself.”

Pettine shrugged.

“Word from the Chief. He says we’re about to move in. Do you want to give a hand?”

“I’m ready,” the Mask said.

“No,” said Decker.

“Don’t blame you. Are you just a head-doctor?”

“Yes. Why?”

“Think we might need some medics before too long. They’re not going to give up without a fight.”

“I can’t help. Don’t even like the sight of blood.”

There was laughter from the briefcase, so loud Decker was certain Pettine would hear. But no.

“You’d better keep your distance, then,” he said, and turned away to head back to the field of action.

Decker drew the bag up towards his chest, and held it tight in his arms. From inside he could hear the zipper opening and closing, opening and closing.

“Shut the fuck up,” he whispered.

“Don’t lock me away,” the Mask whined. “Not tonight of all nights. If you don’t like the sight of blood let me look or you.”

“I can’t.”

“You owe me,” it said. “You denied me in Midian, remember?”

“I had no choice.”

“You have now. You can give me some air. You know you’d like it.”

“I’d be seen.”

“Soon then.”

Decker didn’t reply.

“Soon!” the Mask yelled.

“Hush.”

“Just say it.”

“… please…”

“Say it.”

“Yes. Soon.”

THAT DESIRE

we men had been left on duty at the station to guard the prisoner in Cell Five. Eigerman had given them explicit instructions. They were not on any account to unlock the cell door, whatever noises they heard from within. Nor was any outside agency Judge, doctor or the Good Lord Himself to be given access to the prisoner. And to enforce these edicts, should enforcement be necessary, troopers Cormack and Koestenbaum had been given the keys to the arsenal, and carte blanche to use extreme prejudice should the security of the station be in jeopardy. They weren’t surprised. Shere Neck would most likely never see another prisoner so certain to find his way into the annals of atrocity as Boone. If he were to be sprung from custody Eigerman’s good name would be cursed from coast to coast.

But there was more to the story than that, and both of them knew it. Though the Chief had not been explicit about the condition of the prisoner, rumours had been rife. The man was in some way freakish; possessed of powers that made him dangerous, even behind a locked and bolted door.

Cormack was grateful, then, to have been left to guard the front of the station, while Koestenbaum watched the cell itself. The whole place was a fortress. Every window and door sealed. Now it was simply a question of sitting it out, rifle at the ready, until their cavalry returned from Midian.

It wouldn’t be long. The kind of human garbage: they’d be likely to find at Midian addicts, perverts, radicals would be rounded up in a few hours, and the convoy on its way back to relieve the sentinels. Then tomorrow there’d be a force up from Calgary to take possession of the prisoner, and things would settle back into their regular pattern. Cormack wasn’t in the policing business to sit and sweat the way he was now—he was in it for the easy feeling that came on a summer night when he could drive down to the corner of South and Emmett, and coerce one of the professionals to put her face in his lap for half an hour. That was what he liked the law for. Not this fortress under siege shit.

“Help me,” somebody said.

He heard the words quite clearly. The speaker a woman was just outside the front door.

“Help me, please.”

The appeal was so pitiful he couldn’t ignore it. Rifle cocked he went to the door. There was no glass in it, not even a spy-hole, so he couldn’t see the speaker on the step. But he heard her again. First a sob; then a soft rapping, which was failing even as it came.

“You’ll have to go someplace else,” he said. “I can’t help you right now.”

“I’m hurt,” she seemed to say, but he wasn’t sure. He put his ear to the door. “Did ya hear me?” he asked. “I can’t help you. Go on down to the drug store.”

There was not even a sob by way of reply. Only the faintest of breaths.

Cormack liked women; liked to play the boss-man and bread-winner. Even the hero, as long as it didn’t cost him too much sweat. It went against the grain not to open the door to a woman begging for help. She’d sounded young, and desperate. It was not his heart that hardened, thinking of her vulnerability. Checking first that Koestenbaum wasn’t in sight to witness his defiance of Eigerman’s orders, he whispered:

“Hold on.”

And unbolted the door top and bottom.

He’d only opened it an inch and a hand darted through, its thumb slashing his face. The wound missed his eye by a centimetre, but the spurting blood turned half the world red. Semi-blind, he was thrown backwards as the force on the other side of the door threw it open. He didn’t let the rifle go, however. He fired, first at the woman (the shot went wide), then at her companion, who ran at him half-crouching to avoid the bullets. The second shot, though as wide as the first, brought blood. Not his target’s, however. It was his own boot, and the good flesh and bone inside, that was spattered across the floor.

“Jesus Fucking Christ!”

In his horror he let the rifle drop from his fingers. Knowing he’d not be able to bend and snatch it up again without losing his balance he turned and started to hop towards the desk, where his gun lay.

But Silver Thumbs was already there, swallowing the bullets like vitamin pills.

Denied his defences and knowing he could not stay vertical for more than a few seconds, he began to howl.

Outside Cell Five, Koestenbaum held his post. He had his orders. Whatever happened beyond the door into the station itself he was to stand guard by the cell, defending it from any and every assault. That he was determined to do, however much Cormack yelled.

Grinding out his cigarette he drew the shutter in the cell door aside and put his eyes to the peep-hole. The killer had moved in the last few minutes, edging into the corner by degrees, as if hunted by a patch of weak sunlight that fell through the tiny window high above him. Now he could go no further. He was wedged in the corner, wrapped up in himself. Movement aside, he looked much as he had all along: like wreckage. No danger to anyone.

Appearances deceived, of course; Koestenbaum had been in uniform too long to be naive about that. But he knew a defeated man when he saw one. Boone didn’t even look up when Cormack let out another yelp. He just watched the crawling sunlight from the corner of his eye, and shook.

Koestenbaum slammed the peep-hole shut and turned back to watch the door through which Cormack’s attackers whoever they were had to come. They’d find him ready and waiting, guns blazing.

He didn’t have long to contemplate his last stand, as a blast blew out the lock and half the door with it, shards and smoke filling the air. He fired into the confusion, seeing somebody coming at him. The man was tossing away the rifle he’d used to blow the door, and was raising his hands, which glinted as they swept towards Koestenbaum’s eyes. The trooper hesitated long enough to catch sight of his assailant’s face like something that should have been under bandages or six feet of earth then he fired. The bullet struck its target, but slowed the man not a jot, and before he could fire a second time he was up against the wall, with the raw face inches from his. Now he saw all too clearly what glinted in the man’s hands. A hook hovered an inch from the gleam of his left eye. There was another at his groin.

“Which do you want to live without?” the man said.

“No need,” said a woman’s voice, before Koestenbaum had a chance to choose between sight and sex.

“Let me,” Narcisse said.

“Don’t let him,” Koestenbaum murmured. “Please… don’t let him.”

The woman came into view now. The parts of her that showed seemed natural enough, but he wouldn’t have wanted to lay bets on what she looked like under her blouse. More tits than a bitch, most likely. He was in the hands of freaks.

“Where’s Boone?” she said.

There was no purpose in risking his balls, eye or otherwise. They’d find the prisoner with or without his help.

“Here,” he said, glancing back towards Cell Five.

“And the keys?”

“On my belt.” The woman reached down and took the keys from him.

“Which one?” she said.

“Blue tag,” he replied.

“Thank you.”

She moved past him to the door.

“Wait,” Koestenbaum said.

“What?”

“Make him let me alone.”

“Narcisse,” she said.

The hook was withdrawn from his eye, but the one at his groin remained, pricking him.

“We have to be quick,” Narcisse said.

“I know,” the woman replied.

Koestenbaum heard the door swing open. He glanced round to see her stepping into the cell. As he looked back the fist came at his face, and he dropped to the floor with his jaw broken in three places.

Cormack had suffered the same summary blow, but he’d been already toppling when it came, and instead of knocking him solidly into unconsciousness it had merely left him in a daze, from which he quickly shook himself. He crawled to the door, and hauled himself, hand over hand, to his foot. Then he stumbled out in the street. The rush of homeward traffic was over, but there were still vehicles passing in both directions, and the sight of a toeless trooper hobbling into the middle of the street, arms raised, was enough to bring the flow of traffic to a squealing halt.

But even as the drivers and their passengers stepped out of the trucks and cars to come to his assistance Cormack felt the delayed shock of his self-wounding closing his system down. The words his helpers were mouthing to him reached his befuddled mind as nonsense.

He thought (hoped) somebody had said:

“I’ll get a gun.”

But he couldn’t be sure.

He hoped (prayed) his lolling tongue had told them where to find the felons, but he was even less sure of that.

As the ring of faces faded around him, however, he realized his seeping foot would have left a trail that would lead them back to the transgressors. Comforted, he passed out.

“Boone,” she said. His sallow body, bared to the waist scarred, and missing a nipple shuddered as she spoke his name. But he didn’t look up at her.

“Get him going, will you?”

Narcisse was at the door, staring at the prisoner.

“Not with you yelling I won’t,” she told him. “Leave us alone a little while, huh?”

“No time for fucky-fucky.”

“Just get out.”

“OK.” He raised his arms in mock surrender. “I’m going.”

He closed the door. It was just her and Boone now. The living and the dead.

“Get up,” she told him.

He did nothing but shudder.

“Will you get up? We don’t have that much time.”

“So leave me,” he said.

She ignored the sentiment but not the fact that he’d broken his silence.

“Talk to me,” she said.

“You shouldn’t have come back,” he said, defeat in his every word. “You put yourself at risk for nothing.”

She hadn’t expected this. Anger maybe, that she’d left him to be captured at the Sweetgrass Inn. Suspicion even, that she’d come here with someone from Midian. But not this mumbling, broken creature, slumped in a corner like a boxer who’d fought a dozen too many fights. Where was the man she’d seen at the Inn, changing the order of his very flesh in front of her? Where was the casual strength she’d seen; and the appetite? He scarcely seemed capable of lifting his own head, never mind meat to his lips.

That was the issue, she suddenly understood. That forbidden meat.

“I can still taste it,” he said.

There was such shame in his voice; the human he’d been repulsed by the thing he’d become.

“You weren’t answerable,” she told him. “You weren’t in control of yourself.”

“I am now,” he replied. His nails dug into the my of his forearms, she saw, as though he were holding himself down. “I’m not going to let go. I’m going wait here till they come to string me up.”

“That won’t do any good, Boone,” she reminded him.

“Jesus…” The word decayed into tears. “You know everything?”

“Yes, Narcisse told me. You’re dead. So why wish a hanging on yourself? They can’t kill you.”

“They’ll find a way,” he said. “Take off my head. Blow out my brains.”

“Don’t talk like that!”

“They have to finish me, Lori. Put me out of my misery.”

“I don’t want you out of your misery,” she said.

“But I do!” he replied, looking up at her for the first time. Seeing his face, she remembered how many had doted on him, and understood why. Pain could have no more persuasive apologists than his bones, his eyes.

“I want out,” he said. “Out of this body. Out of this life.”

“You can’t. Midian needs you. It’s being destroyed, Boone.”

“Let it go! Let it all go. Midian’s just a hole in the ground, full of things that should lie down and be dead. They know that, all of ‘em. They just haven’t got the balls to do what’s right.”

“Nothing’s right,” she found herself saying (how far she’d come, to this bleak relativity), “except what you feel and know.”

His small fury abated. The sadness that replaced it was profounder than ever.

“I feel dead,” he said. “I know nothing.”

“That’s not true,” she replied, taking the first steps towards him she’d taken since entering the cell. He flinched as if he expected her to strike him.

“You know me,” she said. “You feel me.”

She took hold of his arm, and pulled it up towards her. He didn’t have time to make a fist. She laid his palm on her stomach.

“You think you disgust me, Boone? You think you horrify me? You don’t.”

She drew his hand up towards her breasts.

“I still want you, Boone. Midian wants you too, but I want you more. I want you cold, if that’s the way you are. I want you dead, if that’s the way you are. And I’ll come to you if you won’t come to me. I’ll let them shoot me down.”

“No,” he said.

Her grip on his hand was light now. He could have slipped it. But he chose to leave his touch upon her, with only the thin fabric of her blouse intervening. She wished she could dissolve it at will; have his hand stroking the skin between her breasts.

“They’re going to come for us sooner or later,” she said.

Nor was she bluffing. There were voices from outside. A lynch-mob gathering. Maybe the monsters were forever. But so were their persecutors.

“They’ll destroy us both, Boone. You for what you are. Me for loving you. And I’ll never hold you again. I don’t want that, Boone. I don’t want us dust in the same wind. I want us flesh.”

Her tongue had outstripped her intention. She hadn’t meant to say it so plainly. But it was said now; and true. She wasn’t ashamed of it.

“I won’t let you deny me, Boone,” she told him. The words were their own engine. They drove her hand to Boone’s cold scalp. She snatched a fist of his thick hair.

He didn’t resist her. Instead the hand on her chest closed on the blouse, and he went down onto his knees in front of her, pressing his face to her crotch, licking at it as if to tongue her clean of clothes and enter her with spit and spirit all in one.

She was wet beneath the fabric. He smelt her heat for him. Knew what she’d said was no lie. He kissed her cunt, or the cloth that hid her cunt, over and over and over.

“Forgive yourself, Boone,” she said.

He nodded.

She took tighter hold on his hair, and pulled him away from the bliss of her scent.

“Say it,” she told him. “Say you forgive yourself.”

He looked up from his pleasure, and she could see before he spoke the weight of shame had gone from his face. Behind his sudden smile she met the monster’s eyes, dark, and darkening still as he delved for it.

The look made her ache.

“Please…” she murmured, “… love me.”

He pulled at her blouse. It tore. His hand was through the gap in one smooth motion, and beneath her bra for her breast. This was madness of course. The mob would be upon them if they didn’t get out quickly. But then madness had drawn her into this circle of dust and flies in the first place; why be surprised that her journey had brought her round to this new insanity? Better this than life without him. Better this than practically anything.

He was getting to his feet, teasing her tit from hiding, putting his cold mouth to her hot nipple, flicking it, licking it, tongue and teeth in perfect play. Death had made a lover of him. Given him knowledge of clay, and how to rouse it; made him easy with the body’s mysteries. He was everywhere about her, working his hips against hers in slow grinding circles trailing his tongue from her breasts to the sweat-bowl between her clavicles, and up along the ridge of her throat to her chin, thence to her mouth.

Only once in her life had there been such wrenching hunger in her. In New York, years before, she’d met and fucked with a man whose name she’d never known, but whose hands and lips seemed to know her better than herself.

“Have a drink with me?” she’d said, when they’d unglued themselves.

He’d told her no almost pityingly, as though someone so ignorant of the rules was bound for grief. So she’d watched him dress and leave, angry with herself for asking, and with him for such practised detachment. But she’d dreamt of him a dozen times in the weeks after, revisiting their squalid moments together, hungry for them again.

She had them here. Boone was the lover of that dark corner, perfected. Cool and feverish, urgent and studied. She knew his name this time; but he was still strange to her. And in the fervour of his possession, and in her heat for him, she felt that other lover, and all the lovers who’d come and gone before him, burned up. It was only their ash in her now where their tongues and cocks had been and she had power over them completely.

Boone was unzipping himself. She took his length in her hand. Now it was his turn to sigh, as she ran her fingers along the underside of his erection, up from his balls to where the ring of his circumcision scar bore a nugget of tender flesh. She stroked him there, tiny movements to match the measure of his tongue back and forth between her lips. Then, on the same sudden impulse, the teasing time was over. He was lifting her skirt, tearing at her underwear, his fingers going where only hers had been for too long. She pushed him back against the wall; pulled his jeans down to mid-thigh. Then, one arm hooked around his shoulders, the other hand enjoying the silk of his cock before it was out of sight, she took him inside. He resisted her speed, a delicious war of want which had her at screaming pitch in seconds. She was never so open, nor had ever needed to be. He filled her to overflowing.

Then it really began. After the promises, the proof. Bracing his upper back against the wall he angled himself so as to throw his fuck up into her, her weight its own insistence. She licked his face; he grinned; spat in it. He laughed and spat back.

“Yes,” she said. “Yes. Go on. Yes.”

All she could manage were affirmatives. Yes to his spittle, yes to his cock; yes to this life in death, and yes in life in death forever and ever.

His answer was honey-hipped; wordless labour, teeth clenched, brow ploughed. The expression on his face made her cunt spasm. To see him shut his eyes against her pleasure; to know that the sight of her bliss took him too close to be countenanced. They had such power, each over each. She demanded his motion with motion of her own, one hand gripping the brick beside his head so she could raise herself along his length then impale herself again. There was no finer hurt. She wished it could never stop.

But there was a voice at the door. She could hear it through her whining head.

“Quickly.”

It was Narcisse.

“Quickly.” Boone heard him too; and the din behind his voice as the lynchers gathered. He matched her new rhythm; up to meet her descent.

“Open your eyes,” she said.

He obeyed, grinning at the command. It was too much for him, meeting her eyes. Too much for her, meeting his. The pact struck, they parted till her cunt only sucked at the head of his cock so slicked it might slip from her then closed on each other for one final stroke.

The joy of it made her cry out, but he choked her yell with his tongue, sealing their eruption inside their mouths. Not so below. Undammed after months, his come overflowed and ran down her legs, its course colder than his scalp or kisses.

It was Narcisse who brought them back from their world of two into that of many. The door was now open. He was watching them without embarrassment.

“Finished?” he wanted to know.

Boone wiped his lips back and forth on Lori’s, spreading their saliva from cheek to cheek.

“For now,” he said, looking only at her.

“So can we get going?” Narcisse said.

“Whenever. Wherever.”

“Midian,” came the instant reply.

“Midian then.”

The lovers drew apart. Lori pulled up her underwear. Boone tried to get his cock, still hard, behind his zip.

“There’s quite a mob out there,” Narcisse said. “How the hell are we going to get past them?”

“They’re all the same,” Boone said, “all afraid.”

Lori, her back turned to Boone, felt a change in the air around her. A shadow was climbing the walls to left and right, spreading over her back, kissing her nape, her spine, her buttocks and what lay between. It was Boone’s darkness. He was in it to its length and breadth.

Even Narcisse was agog.

“Holy shit,” he muttered, then flung the door wide to let the night go running.

The mob was itching for fun. Those with guns and rifles had brought them from their cars; those with the luck to have been travelling with rope in their trunks were practising knots; and those without rope or guns had picked up stones. For justification they needed to look no further than the spattered remains of Cormack’s foot, spread on the station floor. The leaders of the group—who’d established themselves immediately by natural selection (they had louder voices and more powerful weapons)—were treading this red ground when a noise from the vicinity of the cells drew their attention.

Somebody at the back of the crowd started shouting: “Shoot the bastards down!”

It was not Boone’s shadow the leaders’ target-hungry eyes first alighted upon. It was Narcisse. His ruined face brought a gasp of disgust from several of the throng, and shouts for his dispatch from many more.

“Shoot the fucker!”

“Through the heart!”

The leaders didn’t hesitate. Three of them fired. One of them hit the man, the bullet catching Narcisse in the shoulder and passing straight through him. There was a cheer from the mob. Encouraged by this first wounding they surged into the station in still greater numbers, those at the back eager to see the bloodletting, those at the front mostly blind to the fact that their target had not shed a single drop. He hadn’t fallen either, that they did see. And now one or two acted to put that to rights, firing a volley at Narcisse. Most of the shots went wide, but not all.

As the third bullet struck home, however, a roar of fury shook the room, exploding the lamp on the desk and bringing dust from the ceiling.

Hearing it one or two of those just crossing the threshold changed their minds. Suddenly careless of what their neighbours might think they began to dig their way out into the open air. It was still light on the street; there was warmth to cancel the chill of fear that ran down every human spine, hearing that cry. But for those at the head of the mob there was no retreat. The door was jammed. All they could do was stand their ground and aim their weapons, as the roarer emerged from the darkness at the back of the station.

One of the men had been a witness at the Sweetgrass Inn that morning, and knew the man who now came into sight as the killer he’d seen arrested. Knew his name too.

“That’s him!” he started to yell. “That’s Boone!”

The man who’d fired the first shot to strike Narcisse aimed his rifle.

“Bring him down!” somebody shouted.

The man fired.

Boone had been shot before, and shot, and shot. This little bullet, entering his chest and nicking his silent heart, was nothing. He laughed it off and kept coming, feeling the change in him as he breathed it out. His substance was fluid. It broke into droplets and became something new; part the beast he’d inherited from Peloquin, part a shade warrior, like Lylesburg; part Boone the lunatic, content with his visions at last. And oh! the pleasure of it, feeling this possibility liberated and forgiven; the pleasure of bearing down on this human herd and seeing it break before him.

He smelt their heat, and hungered for it. He saw their terror, and took strength from it. They stole such authority for themselves, these people. Made themselves arbiters of good and bad, natural and unnatural, justifying their cruelty with spurious laws. Now they saw a simpler law at work, as their bowels remembered the oldest fear: of being prey.

They fled before him, panic spreading throughout their unruly ranks. The rifles and the stones were forgotten in the chaos, as howls for blood became howls for escape. Trampling each other in their haste, they clawed and fought their way into the street.

One of the riflemen stood his ground, or else was rooted to it in shock. Whichever, the weapon was dashed from his grip by Boone’s swelling hand, and the man flung himself into the throng of people to escape further confrontation.

Daylight still ruled the street outside, and Boone was loath to step into it, but Narcisse was indifferent to such niceties. With the route cleared he made his way out into the light, weaving through the fleeing crowd unnoticed, until he reached the car.

There was some regrouping of forces going on, Boone could see. A knot of people on the far sidewalk comforted by the sunlight, and their distance from beast—talking heatedly together as though they might rally. Dropped weapons were being claimed from the ground. It could only be a matter of time before the shock of Boone’s transformation died away and they renewed their assault.

But Narcisse was swift. He was in the car and revving it by the time Lori reached the door. Boone held her back, the touch of his shadow, (which he trailed like smoke) more than enough to cancel any lingering fear she might have had of his reworked flesh. Indeed, she found herself imagining what it would be like to fuck with him in this configuration, to spread herself for the shadow and the beast at its heart.

The car was at the door now, squealing to a halt in a cloud of its own fumes.

“Go!” Boone said, pitching her through the door, his shadow covering the sidewalk to confound the enemy’s sights. With reason. A shot blew out the back window even as she threw herself into the car; a barrage of stones followed.

Boone was at her side already, and slamming the door.

“They’re going to come after us!” Narcisse said.

“Let them,” was Boone’s response.

“To Midian?”

“It’s no secret now.”

“True.”

Narcisse put his foot down, and the car was away.

“We’ll lead them to Hell,” said Boone, as a quartet of vehicles began to give chase, “if that’s where they want to go.”

His voice was guttural from the throat of the creature he’d become, but the laugh that followed was Boone’s laugh, as though it had always belonged to this beast; a humour more ecstatic than his humanity had room for, that had finally found its purpose and its face.

TRIUMPH OF THE MASK

If he never saw another day like today, Eigerman thought, he’d have little to complain to the Lord about, when he was eventually called. First the sight of Boone in chains. Then bringing the baby out to meet the cameras, knowing his face would be on the cover of every newspaper across the country tomorrow morning. And now this: the glorious sight of Midian in flames.

It had been Pettine’s notion, and a damn good one, to pour lighted gasoline down the gullets of the tombs, to drive whatever was underground up into the light. It had worked better than either of them had anticipated. Once the smoke began to thicken and the fires to spread, the enemy had no choice but to exit their cess-pit into the open air, where God’s good sun took many of them apart at a stroke.

Not all however. Some of them had time to prepare for their emergence, protecting themselves against the light by whatever desperate means they could. Their invention was in vain. The pyre was sealed: gates guarded, walls manned. Unable to escape skyward with wings and heads covered against the sun, they were driven back into the conflagration.

In other circumstances Eigerman might not have allowed himself to enjoy the spectacle as openly as he did. But these creatures weren’t human that much was apparent even from a safe distance. They were miscreated fuckheads no two the same, and he was sure the saints themselves would have laughed to see them bested. Putting down the Devil was the Lord’s own sport.

But it couldn’t last forever. Night would soon be falling. When it did their strongest defence against the enemy would drop out of sight, and the tide might turn. They’d have to leave the bonfire to burn over night, and at dawn return to dig the survivors out of their niches and finish them off. With crosses and holy water securing the walls and gates there’d be little chance of any escaping before daybreak. He wasn’t sure what power was working to subdue the monsters: fire, water, daylight, faith: all, or some combination of these. It didn’t matter. All that concerned him was that he had the power to crack their heads.

A shout from down the hill broke Eigerman’s train of thought.

“You’ve got to stop this.”

It was Ashbery. It looked like he’d been standing too close to the flames. His face was half-cooked, basted in sweat.

“Stop what?” Eigerman yelled back.

“This massacre.”

“I see no massacre.”

Ashbery was within a couple of yards of Eigerman, but he still had to shout over the noise from below: the din of the freaks and the fires punctuated now and again by louder dins as the heat broke a slab, or brought a mausoleum down.

“They don’t stand a chance!” Ashbery hollered.

“They’re not supposed to,” Eigerman pointed out.

“But you don’t know who’s down there! Eigerman! You don’t know who you’re killing.”

The Chief grinned.

“I know damn well,” he said, a look in his eyes that Ashbery had only ever seen in mad dogs. “I’m killing the dead, and how can that be wrong? Eh? Answer me, Ashbery. How can it be wrong to make the dead lie down and stay dead!”

“There’s children down there, Eigerman,” Ashbery replied, jabbing a finger in the direction of Midian.

“Oh yes. With eyes like headlamps! And teeth! You seen the teeth on those fuckers? That’s the Devil’s children, Ashbery.”

“You’re out of your mind.”

“You haven’t got the balls to believe that, have you? You haven’t got balls at all!”

He took a step towards the priest, and caught hold of the black cassock.

“Maybe you’re more like them than us,” he said. “Is that what it is, Ashbery? Feel the call of the wild, do you?”

Ashbery wrested his robes from Eigerman’s grip. They tore.

“All right…” he said, “I tried reasoning with you. If you’ve got such God-fearing executioners, then maybe a man of God can stop them.”

“You leave my men alone!” Eigerman said.

But Ashbery was already half way down the hill, his voice carried above the tumult.

“Stop!” he yelled. “Lay down your weapons!”

Centre-stage in front of the main gates he was visible to a good number of Eigerman’s army, and though few, if any, had stepped into a church since their wedding or their baptism they listened now. They wanted some explanation of the sights the last hour had provided; sights they’d happily have fled from but that some urge they’d barely recognize as their own kept them at the wall, childhood prayers on their lips.

Eigerman knew their loyalty was only his by default. They didn’t obey him because they loved the law. They obeyed because they were more afraid of retreating in front of their companions than of doing the job. They obeyed because they couldn’t defy the ant-under-the-magnifying-glass fascination of watching helpless things go bang. They obeyed because obeying was simpler than not.

Ashbery might change their minds. He had the robes, he had the rhetoric. If he wasn’t stopped he might still spoil the day.

Eigerman took his gun from his holster, and followed the priest down the hill. Ashbery saw him coming; saw the gun in his hand.

He raised his voice still louder.

“This isn’t what God wants!” he yelled. “And it’s not what you want either. You don’t want innocent blood on your hands.”

Priest to the bitter end, Eigerman thought, laying on the guilt.

“Shut your mouth,” faggot he hollered.

Ashbery had no intention of doing so; not when he had his audience in the palm of his hand.

“They’re not animals in there!” he said. “They’re people. And you’re killing them just because this lunatic tells you to.”

His words carried weight, even amongst the atheists. He was voicing a doubt more than one had entertained but none had dared express. Half a dozen of the non-uniformed began to retire towards their cars, all enthusiasm for the extermination drained. One of Eigerman’s men also withdrew from his station at the gate, his slow retreat becoming a run as the chief fired a shot in his direction.

“Stand your ground!” he bellowed. But the man was “M” away, lost in the smoke.

Eigerman turned his fury back on Ashbery.

“Got some bad news,” he said, advancing towards the priest.

Ashbery looked to right and left for someone willing it to defend him, but nobody moved.

“You going to watch him kill me?” he appealed. “For ill God’s sake, won’t somebody help me?” If Eigerman levelled his gun. Ashbery had no intention of attempting to outrun the bullet. He dropped to his knees.

“Our Father…” he began.

“You’re on your own, cocksucker,” Eigerman purred. “Nobody’s listening.”

“Not true,” somebody said.

“Huh?”

The prayer faltered.

“I’m listening.”

Eigerman turned his back on the priest. A figure loomed in the smoke ten yards from him. He pointed the gun in the newcomer’s direction.

“Who are you?”

“Sun’s almost set,” the other said.

“One more step and I’ll shoot you.”

“So shoot,” said the man, and took a step towards the gun. The tatters of smoke that clung to him blew away, and the prisoner in Cell Five walked into Eigerman’s sights, his skin bright, his eyes brighter. He was stark naked. There was a bullet hole in the middle of his chest and more wounds besides, decorating his body.

“Dead,” Eigerman said.

“You bet.”

“Jesus Lord.”

He backed off a step; and another.

“Ten minutes maybe, before sundown,” Boone said. “Then the world’s ours.”

Eigerman shook his head.

“You’re not getting me,” he said. “I won’t let you get me!”

His backward steps multiplied and suddenly he was away at speed, not looking behind him. Had he done so, he would have seen that Boone was not interested in pursuit. He was moving instead towards the besieged gates of Midian. Ashbery was still on the ground there.

“Get up,” Boone told him.

“If you’re going to kill me, do it, will you?” Ashbery said. “Get it over with.”

“Why should I kill you?” Boone said.

“I’m a priest.”

“So?”

“You’re a monster.”

“And you’re not?”

Ashbery looked up at Boone.

“The?”

“There’s lace under the robe,” Boone said.

Ashbery pulled together the tear in his cassock.

“Why hide it?”

“Let me alone.”

“Forgive yourself,” Boone said. “I did.”

He walked on past Ashbery to the gates.

“Wait!” the priest said.

“I’d get going if I were you. They don’t like the robes in Midian. Bad memories.”

“I want to see,” Ashbery said.

“Why?”

“Please. Take me with you.”

“It’s your risk.”

“I’ll take it.”

From a distance it was hard to be sure of what was going on down at the cemetery gates, but of two facts the doctor was sure: Boone had returned, and somehow bested Eigerman. At the first sight of his arrival Decker had taken shelter in one of the police vehicles. There he sat now, briefcase in hand, trying to plot his next action.

It was difficult, with two voices each counselling different things. His public self demanded retreat, before events became any more dangerous.

Leave now, it said. Just drive away. Let them all die together.

There was wisdom in this. With night almost fallen, and Boone there to rally them, Midian’s hosts might still triumph. If they did, and they found Decker, his heart would be ripped from his chest.

But there was another voice demanding his attention.

Stay, it said.

The voice of the Mask, rising from the case on his lap.

You’ve denied me here once already, it said.

So he had, knowing when he did it there’d come a time for repaying the debt.

“Not now,” he whispered.

Now, it said.

He knew rational argument carried no weight against its hunger, nor did pleading.

Use your eyes, it said. I’ve got work to do.

What did it see that he didn’t? He stared out through the window.

Don’t you see her?

Now he did. In his fascination with Boone, naked at the gates, he’d missed the other newcomer to the field: Boone’s woman.

Do you see the bitch? the Mask said.

“I see her.”

Perfect timing, child. In this chaos who’s going to see me finish her off! Nobody. And with her gone there’ll be no-one left who knows our secret.

“There’s still Boone.”

He’ll never testify, the Mask laughed. He’s a dead man, for Christ’s sake. What’s a zombie’s word worth, tell me that?

“Nothing,” Decker said.

Exactly. He’s no danger to us. But the woman is. Let me silence her.

“Suppose you’re seen?”

Suppose I am, the Mask said. They’ll think I was one of Midian’s clan all along.

“Not you,” Decker said.

The thought of his precious Other being confused with the degenerates of Midian nauseated him.

“You’re pure,” he said.

Let me prove it, the Mask coaxed.

“Just the woman?”

Just the woman. Then we’ll leave.

He knew the advice made sense. They’d never have a better opportunity of killing the bitch.

He started to unlock the case. Inside, the Mask grew agitated.

Quickly or we’ll lose her.

His fingers slid on the dial as he ran the numbers of the lock.

Quickly, damn you.

The final digit clicked into place. The lock sprang open.

Of’ Button Face was never more beautiful.

Though Boone had advised Lori to stay with Narcisse, the sight of Midian in flames was enough to draw her companion away from the safety of the hill and down towards the cemetery gates. Lori went with him a little way, but her presence seemed to intrude upon his grief, so she hung back a few paces, and in the smoke and deepening twilight was soon divided from him.

The scene before her was one of utter confusion. Any attempt to complete the assault on the necropolis had ceased since Boone had sent Eigerman running. Both his men and their civilian support had retreated from around the walls. Some had already driven away, most likely fearing what would happen when the sun sank over the horizon. Most remained however, prepared to beat a retreat if necessary, but mesmerized by the spectacle of destruction. Her gaze went from one to another, looking for some sign of what they were feeling, but every face was blank. They looked like death masks, she thought, wiped of response. Except that she knew the dead now. She walked with them, talked with them. Saw them feel and weep. Who then were the real dead? The silent hearted, who still knew pain, or their glassy-eyed tormentors?

A break in the smoke uncovered the sun, teetering on the rim of the world. The red light dazzled her. She closed her eyes against it.

In the darkness, she heard a breath a little way behind her. She opened her eyes, and began to turn, knowing harm was coming. Too late to slip it. The Mask was a yard from her, and closing.

She had seconds only before the knife found her, but it was long enough to see the Mask as she’d never seen it before. Here was the blankness on the faces she’d studied perfectly perfected; the human fiend made myth. No use to call it Decker. It wasn’t Decker. No use to call it anything. It was as far beyond names as she was beyond power to tame it.

It slashed her arm. Once, and again.

There were no taunts from it this time. It had come only to despatch her.

The wounds stung. Instinctively she put her hand to them, her motion giving him opportunity to kick the legs from under her. She had no time to cushion her fall. The impact emptied her lungs. Sobbing for breath, she turned her face to the ground to keep it from the knife. The earth seemed to shudder beneath her. Illusion, surely. Yet it came again.

She glanced up at the Mask. He too had felt the tremors, and was looking towards the cemetery. His distraction would be her only reprieve; she had to take it. Rolling out of his shadow she got to her feet. There was no sign of Narcisse, or Rachel; nor much hope of help from the death-masks, who’d forsaken their vigil and were hurrying away from the smoke as the tremors intensified. Fixing her eyes on the gate through which Boone had stepped, she stumbled down the hill, the dusty soil dancing at her feet.

The source of the agitation was Midian. Its cue, the disappearance of the sun, and with it the light that had trapped the Breed underground. It was their noise that made the ground shake, as they destroyed their refuge. What was below could remain below no longer.

The Nightbreed were rising.

The knowledge didn’t persuade her from her course. Whatever was loose inside the gate she’d long ago made her peace with it, and might expect mercy. From the horror at her back, matching her stride for stride, she could expect none.

There were only the fires from the tombs up ahead to light her way now, a way strewn with the debris of the siege: petrol cans, shovels, discarded weapons. She was almost at the gates before she caught sight of Babette standing close to the wall, her face terror stricken.

“Run!” she yelled, afraid the Mask would wound the child.

Babette did as she was told, her body seeming to melt into beast as she turned and fled through the gates. Lori came a few paces after her, but by the time she was over the threshold the child had already gone, lost down the smoke filled avenues. The tremors here were strong enough to unseat the paving stones, and topple the mausoleums, as though some force underground—Baphomet, perhaps, Who Made Midian was shaking its foundations to bring the place to ruin. She hadn’t anticipated such violence; her chances of surviving the cataclysm were slim.

But better to be buried in the rubble than succumb to the Mask. And be flattered, at the end, that Fate had at least offered her a choice of extinctions.

THE HARROWING

In the cell back at Shere Neck memories of Midian’s labyrinth had tormented Boone. Closing his eyes against the sun he’d found himself lost here, only to open them again and find the maze echoed in the whirls of his fingertips and the veins on his arms. Veins in which no heat ran; reminders, like Midian, of his shame.

Lori had broken that spell of despair, coming to him not begging but demanding he forgive himself.

Now, back in the avenues from which his monstrous condition had sprung, he felt her love for him like the life his body no longer possessed.

He needed its comfort, in the pandemonium. The Nightbreed were not simply bringing Midian down, they were erasing all clue to their nature or keepsake of their passing. He saw them at work on every side, labouring to finish what Eigerman’s scourge had begun. Gathering up the pieces of their dead and throwing them into the flames; burning their beds, their clothes, anything they couldn’t take with them.

These were not the only preparations for escape. He glimpsed the Breed in forms he’d never before had the honour to see: unfurling wings, unfolding limbs. One becoming many (a man, a flock); many becoming one (three lovers, a cloud). All around, the rites of departure.

Ashbery was still at Boone’s side, agog.

“Where are they going?”

“I’m too late,” Boone said. “They’re leaving Midian.”

The lid of a tomb ahead flew off, and a ghost form rose like a rocket into the night sky.

“Beautiful,” Ashbery said. “What are they? Why have I never known them?”

Boone shook his head. He had no way to describe the Breed that were not the old ways. They didn’t belong to Hell; nor yet to Heaven. They were what the species he’d once belonged to could not bear to be. The unpeople; the anti-tribe; humanity’s sack unpicked and sewn together again with the moon inside.

And now, before he’d a chance to know them and by knowing them, know himself—he was losing them. They were finding transport in their cells, and rising to the night.

“Too late,” he said again, the pain of this parting bringing tears to his eyes.

The escapes were gathering momentum. On every side doors were being thrown wide, and slabs overturned, as the spirits ascended in innumerable forms. Not all flew. Some went as goat or tiger, racing through the flames to the gate. Most went alone, but some whose fecundity neither death nor Midian had slowed went with families of six or more, their littlest in their arms. He was witnessing, he knew, the passing of an age, the end of which had begun the moment he’d first stepped on Midian’s soil. He was the maker of this devastation, though he’d set no fire and toppled no tomb. He had brought men to Midian. In doing so, he’d destroyed it. Even Lori could not persuade him to forgive himself that. The thought might have tempted him to the flames, had he not heard the child calling his name.

She was only human enough to use words; the rest was beast.

“Lori,” she said.

“What about her?”

“The Mask has her.”

The Mask? She could only mean Decker.

“Where?”

Close, and closer still.

Knowing she couldn’t outpace him she tried instead to out dare him, going where she hoped he would not. But he was too hot for her life to be shaken off. He followed her into territory where the ground erupted beneath their feet, and smoking stone rained around them.

It was not his voice that called her, however.

“Lori! This way!” She chanced a desperate look, and there God love him! was Narcisse, beckoning. She veered off the pathway, or what was left of it, towards him, ducking between two mausoleums as their stained glass blew, and a stream of shadow, pricked with eyes, left its hiding place for the stars. It was like a piece of night sky itself, she marvelled. It belonged in the heavens.

The sight slowed her pace by an all but fatal step. The Mask closed the gap between them and snatched at her blouse. She threw herself forward to avoid the stab she knew must follow, the fabric tearing as she fell. This time he had her. Even as she reached for the wall to haul herself to her feet she felt his gloved hand at her nape.

“Fuckhead!” somebody shouted.

She looked up to see Narcisse at the other end of the passage between the mausoleums. He’d clearly caught Decker’s attention. The hold on her neck was relaxing. It wasn’t enough for her to squirm free, but if Narcisse could only keep up his distraction he might do the trick.

“Got something for you,” he said, and took his hands from his pocket to display the silver hooks on his thumbs.

He struck the hooks together. They sparked.

Decker let Lori’s neck slip from his fingers. She slid out of his reach and began to stumble towards Narcisse. He was moving down the passage towards her or rather towards Decker, on whom his eyes were fixed.

“Don’t,” she gasped. “He’s dangerous.”

Narcisse heard her, he grinned at the warning but he made no reply. He just moved on past her to intercept the killer.

Lori glanced back. As the pair came within a yard of each other the Mask dragged a second knife, its blade as broad as a machete, from his jacket. Before Narcisse had a chance to defend himself the butcher delivered a swift downward stroke that separated Narcisse’s left hand from his wrist in a single cut. Shaking his head, Narcisse took a backward step, but the Mask matched his retreat, raising the machete a second time and bringing it down on his victim’s skull. The blow divided Narcisse’s head from scalp to neck. It was a wound even a dead man could not survive. Narcisse’s body began to shake, and then like Ohnaka, trapped in sunlight he came apart with a crack, a chorus of howls and sighs emerging, then taking flight.

Lori let out a sob, but stifled anything more. There was no time to mourn. If she waited to shed a single tear the Mask would claim her, and Narcisse’s sacrifice would have been for nothing. She started to back away, the walls shaking to either side of her, knowing she should simply run but unable to detach herself from the sight of the Mask’s depravity. Rooting amid the carnage he skewered half of Narcisse’s head on the finer of his blades, then rested the knife on his shoulder, trophy and all, before renewing his pursuit.

Now she ran, out of the shadow of the mausoleums and back onto the main avenue. Even if memory could have offered a guide to her whereabouts all the monuments had gone to the same rubble, she could not tell north from south. It was all one in the end. Whichever way she turned—the same ruin, and the same pursuer. If he would come after her forever and forever and he would, what was the use of living in fear of him? Let him have his sharp way. Her heart beat too hard to be pressed any further.

But even as she resigned herself to his knife the stretch of paving between her and her slaughterer cracked open, a plume of smoke shielding her from the Mask. An instant later the whole avenue opened up. She fell. Not to the ground. There was no ground. But into the earth.

“I’m falling!” the child said.

The shock of it almost toppled her from Boone’s shoulders. His hands went up to support her. She took fiercer hold of his hair.

“Steady?” he said.

“Yes.”

She wouldn’t countenance Ashbery accompanying them. He’d been left to fend for himself in the maelstrom, while they went looking for Lori.

“Ahead,” she said, directing her mount. “Not very far.”

The fires were dying down, having devoured all they could get their tongues to. Confronted with cold brick all they could do was lick it black, then gutter out. But the tremors from below had not ceased. Their motions still ground stone on stone. And beneath the reverberations there was another sound, which Boone didn’t so much hear as feel: in his gut and balls and teeth.

The child turned his head with her reins.

“That way,” she said.

The diminishing fires made progress easier; their brightness hadn’t suited Boone’s eyes. Now he went more quickly, though the avenues had been ploughed by the quake and he trod turned earth.

“How far?” he asked.

“Hush,” she told him.

“What?”

“Stand still.”

“You hear it too?” he said.

“Yes.”

“What is it?”

She didn’t answer at first, but listened again.

Then she said:

“Baphomet.”

In his hours of imprisonment he’d thought more than once of the Baptiser’s chamber, of the cold time he’d spent witness to the divided God. Hadn’t it spoken prophecies to him? whispered in his head and demanded he listen? It had seen this ruin. It had told him Midian’s last hour was imminent. Yet there’d been no accusations, though it must have known that it spoke to the man responsible. Instead it had seemed almost intimate, which had terrified him more than any assault. He could not be the confidant of divinities. He’d come to appeal to Baphomet as one of the newly dead, requesting a place in the earth. But he’d been greeted like an actor in some future drama. Called by another name, even. He’d wanted none of it. Not the auguries; not the name. He’d fought them, turning his back on the Baptiser; stumbling away, shaking the whispers from his head.

In that he’d not succeeded. At the thought of Baphomet’s presence its words, and that name, were back like Furies.

You’re Cabal, it had said.

He’d denied it then; he denied it now. Much as he pitied Baphomet’s tragedy, knowing it couldn’t escape this destruction in its wounded condition, he had more urgent claims upon his sympathies.

He couldn’t save the Baptiser. But he could save Lori.

“She’s there!” the child said.

“Which way?”

“Straight ahead. Look!”

There was only chaos visible. The avenue in front of them had been split open; light and smoke poured up through the ruptured ground. There was no sign of anything living.

“I don’t see her,” he said.

“She’s underground,” the child replied. “In the pit.”

“Direct me then.”

“I can’t go any further.”

“Why not?”

“Put me down. I’ve taken you as far as I can.” A barely suppressed panic had crept into her voice. “Put me down,” she insisted.

Boone dropped to his haunches, and the child slid off his shoulders.

“What’s wrong?” he said.

“I mustn’t go with you. It’s not allowed.”

After the havoc they’d come through, her distress was bewildering.

“What are you afraid of?” he said.

“I can’t look,” she replied. “Not at the Baptiser.”

“It’s here?”

She nodded, retreating from him as new violence opened the fissure ahead even wider.

“Go to Lori,” she told him. “Bring her out. You’re all she has.”

Then she was gone, two legs becoming four as she fled, leaving Boone to the pit.

Lori’s consciousness flickered out as she fell. When she came round, seconds later, she was lying half way up, or down, a steep slope. The roof above her was still intact, but badly fractured, the cracks opening even as she watched, presaging total collapse. If she didn’t move quickly she’d be buried alive. She looked towards the head of the slope. The cross tunnel was open to the sky. She began to crawl towards it, earth cascading down on her head, the walls creaking as they were pressed to surrender.

“Not yet…” she murmured. “Please, not yet…”

It was only as she came within six feet of the summit that her dazed senses recognized the slope. She’d carried Boone up this very incline once, away from the power that resided in the chamber at the bottom. Was it still there, watching her scrabblings? Or was this whole cataclysm evidence of its departure: the architect’s farewell? She couldn’t feel its surveillance, but then she could feel very little. Her body and mind functioned because instinct told them to. There was life at the top of the slope. Inch by wracking inch she was crawling to meet it.

Another minute and she reached the tunnel, or its roofless remains. She lay on her back for a time, staring up at the sky. With her breath regained she got to her feet and examined her wounded arm. The cuts were gummed up with dirt, but at least the blood had ceased to flow.

As she coaxed her legs to move something fell in front of her, wet in the dirt. Narcisse looked up at her with half a face. She sobbed his name, turning her eyes to meet the Mask. He straddled the tunnel like a gravedigger then dropped down to join her.

The spike was aimed at her heart. Had she been stronger it would have struck home, but the earth at the head of the slope gave way beneath her backward step and she had no power to keep herself from falling, head over heels, back down the incline. Her cry gave Boone direction. He clambered over upended slabs of paving into the exposed tunnels, then through the maze of toppled walls and dying fires towards her. It was not her figure he saw in the passage ahead, however, turning to meet him with knives at the ready.

It was the doctor, at last.

From the precarious safety of the slope Lori saw the Mask turn from her, diverted from its purpose. She had managed to arrest her fall by catching hold of a crack in the wall with her good hand, which did its duty long enough for her to glimpse Boone in the passageway above. She’d seen what the machete had done to Narcisse. Even the dead had their mortality. But before she could utter any word of warning to Boone a wave of cold power mounted the slope behind her. Baphomet had not vacated its flame. It was there still, its grasp unpicking her fingers from the wall.

Unable to resist it, she slid backwards down the slope, into the erupting chamber.

The ecstasies of the Breed hadn’t tainted Decker. He came at Boone like an abattoir worker to finish a slaughter he’d been called from: without flourish, without passion.

It made him dangerous. He struck quickly, with no signal of his intention. The thin blade ran straight through Boone’s neck.

To disarm the enemy Boone simply stepped away from him. The knife slid through Decker’s fingers, still caught in Boone’s flesh. The doctor made no attempt to claim it back. Instead he took a two-handed grip on the skull splitter. Now there was some sound from him: a low moan that broke into gasps as he threw himself forward to despatch his victim.

Boone ducked the slicing blow, and the blade embedded itself in the tunnel wall. Earth spattered them both as Decker pulled it free. Then he swung again, this time missing his target’s face by a finger length.

Caught off balance, Boone almost fell, and his downcast eyes chanced on Decker’s trophy. He couldn’t mistake that maimed face. Narcisse cut up and dead in the dirt.

“You bastard!” he roared.

Decker paused for a moment, and watched Boone. Then he spoke. Not with his own voice, but with someone else’s; a grinning whine of a voice.

“You can die,” it said.

As he spoke he swung the blade back and forth, not attempting to touch Boone, merely to demonstrate his authority. The blade whined like the voice, the music of a fly in a coffin, to and fro between the walls. Boone retreated before the display, with mortal terror in his gut. Decker was right. The dead could die.

He drew breath, through mouth and punctured throat. He’d made a near fatal error, staying human in the presence of the Mask. And why? From some absurd idea that this final confrontation should be man to man; that they’d trade words as they fought, and he’d undo the doctor’s ego before he undid his life.

It wouldn’t be that way. This wasn’t a patient’s revenge on his corrupted healer: this was a beast and a butcher, tooth to knife.

He exhaled, and the truth in his cells came forth like honey. His nerves ran with bliss; his body throbbed as it swelled. In life he’d never felt so alive as he did at these moments, stripping off his humanity and dressing for the night.

“No more…” he said, and let the beast come from him everywhere.

Decker raised his machete to undo the enemy before the change had been completed. But Boone didn’t wait. Still transforming, he tore at the butcher’s face, taking off the mask buttons, zipper and all to uncover the infirmities beneath.

Decker howled at being revealed, putting his hand up to his face to half cover it against the beast’s stare.

Boone snatched the mask up from the ground, and began to tear it apart, his claws shredding the linen. Decker’s howls mounted. Dropping his hand from his face he began to swipe at Boone with insane abandon. The blade caught Boone’s chest, slicing it open, but as it returned for a second cut Boone dropped the rags and blocked the blow, carrying Decker’s arm against the wall with such force he broke the bones. The machete fell to the ground, and Boone reached out for Decker’s face.

The steep howl stopped as the claws came at him. The mouth closed. The features slackened. For an instant Boone was looking at a face he’d studied for hours, hanging on its every word. At that thought his hand went from face to neck and he seized Decker’s windpipe, which had funded so many lies. He closed his fist, his claws piercing the meat of Decker’s throat. Then he pulled. The machinery came out in a wash of blood. Decker’s eyes widened, fixed on his silencer. Boone pulled again, and again. The eyes glazed. The body jerked, and jerked, then started to sag.

Boone didn’t let it drop. He held it as in a dance, and undid the flesh and bone as he’d undone the mask, clots of Decker’s body striking the walls. There was only the dimmest memory of Decker’s crimes against him in his head now. He tore with a Breed’s zeal, taking monstrous satisfaction in a monstrous act. When he’d done his worst he dropped the wreckage to the earth, and finished the dance with his partner underfoot.

There’d be no rising from the grave for this body. No hope of earthly resurrection. Even in the full flood of his attack Boone had withheld the bite that would have passed life after death into Decker’s system. His flesh belonged only to the flies, and their children; his reputation to the vagaries of those who chose to tell his story. Boone didn’t care. If he never shrugged off the crimes Decker had hung around his neck it scarcely mattered now. He was no longer innocent. With this slaughter he became the killer Decker had persuaded him he was. In murdering the prophet he made the prophecy true.

He let the body lie, and went to seek Lori. There was only one place she could have gone: down the slope into Baphomet’s chamber. There was pattern in this, he saw. The Baptiser had brought her here, unknitting the ground beneath her feet so as to bring Boone after.

The flame its divided body occupied threw a cold glamour up into his face. He started down the slope towards it, dressed in the blood of his enemy.

CABAL

Out in the wasteland, Ashbery was found by a light, flickering up from between the fractured paving stones. Its beams were bitterly cold, and sticky in a way light had no right to be, adhering to his sleeve and hand before fading away. Intrigued, he tracked its source from one eruption to another, each point brighter than the one before.

A scholar in his youth, he would have known the name Baphomet had somebody whispered it to him, and understood why the light, springing from the deity’s flame, exercised such a claim upon him. He would have known the deity as god and goddess in one body. Would have known too how its worshippers had suffered for their idol, burned as heretics, or for crimes against nature. He might have feared a power that demanded such homage; and wisely.

But there was nobody to tell him. There was only the light, drawing him on.

The Baptiser was not alone in its chamber, Boone found. He counted eleven members of the Breed around the walls, kneeling blindfolded with their backs to the flame. Amongst them, Mister Lylesburg and Rachel.

On the ground to the right of the door lay Lori. There was blood on her arm, and on her face, and her eyes were closed. But even as he went to her aid the thing in the flame set its eyes on him, turning him round with an icy touch. It had business with him, which it was not about to postpone.

“Approach,” it said. “Of your own free will.”

He was afraid. The flame from the ground was twice the size it had been when last he’d entered, battering the roof of the chamber. Fragments of earth, turned to either ice or ash, fell in a glittering rain and littered the floor. Standing a dozen yards from the flame the assault of its energies was brutal. Yet Baphomet invited him closer.

“You’re safe,” it said. “You came in the blood of your enemy. It’ll keep you warm.”

He took a step towards the fire. Though he’d suffered bullet and blade in his life since death, and felt none of them, he felt the chill from Baphomet’s flame plainly enough. It pricked his nakedness, made frost patterns on his eyes. But Baphomet’s words were no empty promise. The blood he wore grew hot as the air around him grew colder. He took comfort from it, and braved the last few steps.

The weapon, Baphomet said. Discard it.

He’d forgotten the knife in his neck. He drew it out of his flesh and threw it aside.

Closer still, the Baptiser said.

The flame’s fury concealed all but glimpses of its freight, but enough to confirm what his first encounter with Baphomet had taught him: that if this deity had made creatures in its own image then he’d never set eyes on them. Even in dreams, nothing that approached the Baptiser. It was one of one.

Suddenly some part of it reached for him, out of the flame. Whether limb, or organ, or both he had no chance to see. It snatched at his neck and hair and pulled him towards the fire. Decker’s blood didn’t shield him now; the ice scorched his face. Yet there was no fighting free. It immersed his head in the flame, holding him fast. He knew what this was the instant the fire closed around his head: Baptism.

And to confirm that belief, Baphomet’s voice in his head.

You are Cabal, it said.

The pain was mellowing. Boone opened his mouth to draw breath, and the fire coursed down his throat and into his belly and lungs, then through his whole system. It carried his new name with it, baptizing him inside out.

He was no longer Boone. He was Cabal. An alliance of many.

From this cleansing on he would be capable of heat and blood and making children: that was in Baphomet’s gift, and the deity gave it. But he would be frail too, or frailer. Not just because he bled, but because he was charged with purpose.

I must be hidden tonight, Baphomet said. We all have enemies, but mine have lived longer and learned more cruelty than most. I will be taken from here and hidden from them.

Now the presence of the Breed made sense. They’d remained behind to take a fraction of the Baptiser with them and conceal it from whatever forces came in pursuit.

This is your doing, Cabal, Baphomet said. I don’t accuse you. It was bound to happen. No refuge is forever. But I charge you “Yes?” he said. “Tell me.”

Rebuild what you’ve destroyed.

“A new Midian?”

No.

“What then?”

You must discover for us in the human world.

“Help me,” he said.

I can’t. From here on, it’s you must help me. You have undone the world. Now you must re-make it.

There were shudders in the flame. The Rites of Baptism were almost over.

“How do I begin?” Cabal said.

Heal me, Baphomet replied. Find me, and heal me. Save me from my enemies.

The voice that had first addressed him had changed its nature utterly. All trace of demand had gone from it. There was only this prayer to be healed, and kept from harm, delivered softly at his ear. Even the leash on his head had been slipped, leaving him free to look left and right. A call he hadn’t heard had summoned Baphomet’s attendants from the wall. Despite their blindfolds they walked with steady steps to the edge of the flame, which had lost much of its ferocity. They’d raised their arms, over which shrouds were draped, and the flame wall broke as pieces of Baphomet’s body were dropped into the travellers’ waiting arms, to be wrapped up instantly and put from sight.

This parting of piece from piece was agonizing. Cabal felt the pain as his own, filling him up until it was almost beyond enduring. To escape it he began to retreat from the flame.

But as he did so the one piece yet to be claimed tumbled into view in front of his face. Baphomet’s head. It turned to him, vast and white, its symmetry fabulous. His entire body rose to it: gaze, spittle and prick. His heart began to beat, healing its damaged wing with its first throb. His congealed blood liquefied like a saint’s relics, and began to run. His testicles tightened; sperm ran up his cock. He ejaculated into the flame, pearls of semen carried up past his eyes to touch the Baptiser’s face.

Then the rendezvous was over. He stumbled out of the fire as Lylesburg—the last of the adherents in the chamber—received the head from the flames and wrapped it up.

Its tenants departed, the flame’s ferocity redoubled. Cabal stumbled back as it unleashed itself with terrifying vigour. On the ground above, Ashbery felt the force build, and tried to retreat from it, but his mind was full of what he’d spied upon, and its weight slowed him. The fire caught him, sweeping him up as it hurtled heavenward. He shrieked at its touch, and at the aftertaste of Baphomet that flooded his system. His many masks were burned away. The robes first, then the lace he’d not been able to pass a day of his adult life without wearing. Next the sexual anatomy he’d never much enjoyed. And finally, his flesh, scrubbing him clean. He fell back to earth more naked than he’d been in his mother’s womb, and blind. The impact smashed his legs and arms beyond repair.

Below, Cabal shook himself from the daze of revelation. The fire had blown a hole in the roof of the chamber, and was spreading from it in all directions. It would consume flesh as easily as earth or stone. They had to be out of here before it found them. Lori was awake. From the suspicion in her eyes as he approached it was plain she’d seen the Baptism, and feared him.

“It’s me,” he told her. “It’s still me.”

He offered her a hand. She took it, and he pulled her to her feet.

“I’ll carry you,” he said.

She shook her head. Her eyes had gone from him to something on the floor behind him. He followed her gaze. Decker’s blade lay close to the fissure, where the man he’d been before the Baptism had cast it aside.

“You want it?” he said.

“Yes.”

Shielding his head from the debris he retraced his steps and picked it up.

“Is he dead?” she asked, as he came back to her. “He’s dead.”

There was no sign of the corpse to verify his claim. The tunnel, collapsing on itself, had already buried him, as it was burying all of Midian. A tomb for the tombs.

With so much already levelled it wasn’t difficult to find their way out to the main gates. They saw no sign of Midian’s inhabitants on their way. Either the fire had consumed their remains, or rubble and earth covered them.

Just outside the gate, left where they could not fail to find it, was a reminder for Lori of one whom she prayed had escaped unharmed. Babette’s doll woven from grasses, and crowned with spring flowers lay in a small ring of stones. As Lori’s fingers made contact with the toy it seemed she saw one final time through the child’s eyes a landscape moving by as somebody speeded her away to safety. The glimpse was all too brief. She had no time to pass a prayer for good fortune along to the child before the vision was startled from her by a noise at her back. She turned to see that the pillars which had supported Midian’s gates were beginning to topple. Cabal snatched her arm as the two stone slabs struck each other, teetered head to head like matched wrestlers, then fell sideways to hit the ground where moments before Lori and Cabal had stood.

Though he had no watch to read the hour, Cabal had a clear sense Baphomet’s gift, perhaps of how long they had until daybreak. In his mind’s eye he could see the planet, like a clock face decorated with seas, the magical divide of night from day creeping around it.

He had no fear of the sun’s appearance on the horizon. His Baptism had given him a strength denied his brothers and sisters. The sun wouldn’t kill him. This he knew without question. Undoubtedly it would be a discomfort to him. Moonrise would always be a more welcome sight than daybreak. But his work wouldn’t be confined to the night hours. He wouldn’t need to hide his head from the sun the way his fellow Breed were obliged to. Even now they’d be looking for a place of refuge before morning broke.

He imagined them in the sky over America, or running beside its highways, groups dividing when some amongst them grew tired, or found a likely haven: the rest moving on, more desperate by the moment. Silently he wished them safe journeys and secure harbour.

More: he promised he would find them again with time. Gather them up and unite them as Midian had done. Unwittingly, he’d harmed them. Now, he had to heal that harm, however long it took.

“I have to start tonight,” he told Lori. “Or their trails will be cold. Then I’ll never find them.”

“You’re not going without me, Boone.”

“I’m not Boone any longer,” he told her.

“Why?”

They sat on the hill overlooking the necropolis, and he recited to her all he’d learned at the Baptism. Hard lessons, which he had too few words to communicate. She was weary, and shivering, but she wouldn’t let him stop.

“Go on…” she’d kept saying, when he’d faltered. “Tell me everything.”

She knew most of it. She’d been Baphomet’s instrument as much as he, or more. Part of the prophecy. Without her he’d never have returned to Midian to save it, and to fail. The consequence of that return and that failure was the task before him.

Yet she revolted.

“You can’t leave me,” she said. “Not after all that’s happened.”

She put her hand on his leg.

“Remember the cell…” she murmured.

He looked at her.

“You told me to forgive myself. And it was good advice. But it doesn’t mean I can turn my back on what happened here. Baphomet; Lylesburg; all of them… I destroyed the only home they ever had.”

“You didn’t destroy it.”

“If I’d never come here, it’d still be standing,” he replied. “I have to undo that damage.”

“So take me with you,” she said. “We’ll go together.”

“It can’t be that way. You’re alive, Lori. I’m not. You’re still human. I’m not.”

“You can change that.”

“What are you saying?”

“You can make me the same as you. It’s not difficult. One bite and Peloquin changed you forever. So change me.”

“I can’t.”

“You won’t you mean.”

She turned the point of Decker’s blade in the dirt.

“You don’t want to be with me. Simple as that, isn’t it?” She made a small, tight-lipped smile. “Haven’t you got the guts to say it?”

“When I’ve finished my work…” he answered. “Maybe then.”

“Oh, in a hundred years or so?” she murmured, tears beginning. “You’ll come back for me then will you? Dig me up. Kiss me all over. Tell me you would have come sooner, but the days just kept slipping by.”

“Lori.”

“Shut up,” she said. “Don’t give me any more excuses. They’re just insults.” She studied the blade, not him. “You’ve got your reasons. I think they stink, but you keep hold of them. You’re going to need something to cling to.”

He didn’t move.

“What are you waiting for? I’m not going to tell you it’s all right. Just go. I never want to set eyes on you again.”

He stood up. Her anger hurt, but it was easier than tears. He backed away three or four paces, then understanding that she wouldn’t grant him a smile or even a look he turned from her.

Only then did she glance up. His eyes were averted. It was now or never. She put the point of Decker’s blade to her belly. She knew she couldn’t drive it home with only one hand, so she went on to her knees, wedged the handle in the dirt, and let her body weight carry her down onto the blade. It hurt horribly. She yelled in pain.

He turned to find her writhing, her good blood pouring out into the soil. He ran back to her, turning her over. The death spasms were already in her.

“I lied,” she murmured. “Boone… I lied. You’re all I ever want to see.”

“Don’t die,” he said. “Oh God in Heaven, don’t die.”

“So stop me.”

“I don’t know how.”

“Kill me. Bite me… give me the balm.”

Pain twisted up her face. She gasped.

“Or let me die, if you can’t take me with you. That’s better than living without you.”

He cradled her, tears dropping onto her face. Her pupils were turning up beneath her lids. Her tongue was twitching at her lips. In seconds, she’d be gone, he knew. Once dead, she’d be beyond his power of recall.

“Is… it… no?” she said. She wasn’t seeing him any longer.

He opened his mouth to provide his answer, raising her neck to his bite. Her skin smelled sour. He bit deep into the muscle, her blood meaty on his tongue, the balm rising in his throat to enter her bloodstream. But the shudders in her body had already ceased. She slumped in his embrace.

He raised his head from her torn neck, swallowing what he’d taken. He’s waited too long. Damn him! She was his mentor and his confessor, and he’d let her slip from him. Death had been upon her before he’d had time to turn sting into promise.

Appalled at this last and most lamentable failure he laid her down on the ground in front of him.

As he drew his arms out from beneath her she opened her eyes.

“I’ll never leave you,” she said.

ABIDE WITH ME

It was Pettine who found Ashbery, but it was Eigerman who recognized the remnants for the man they’d been. The priest still had life in him, a fact given the severity of his injuries that verged on the miraculous. Both his legs were amputated in the days following, and one of his arms up to mid-bicep. He didn’t emerge from his coma after the operations, nor did he die, though every surgeon opined that his chances were virtually zero. But the same fire that had maimed him had lent him an unnatural fortitude. Against all the odds, he endured.

He was not alone through the nights and days of unconsciousness. Eigerman was at his side twenty hours out of every twenty-four, waiting like a dog at a table for some scrap from above, certain that the priest could lead him to the evil that had undone both their lives.

He got more than he bargained for. When Ashbery finally rose from the deep, after two months of teetering on extinction, he rose voluble. Insane, but voluble. He named Baphomet. He named Cabal. He told, in the hieroglyphs of the hopelessly lunatic, of how the Breed had taken the pieces of their divinity’s body and hidden them. More than that. He said he could find them again. Touched by the Baptiser’s fire, and its survivors, he wanted the touch again.

“I can smell God,” he’d say, over and over.

“Can you take us to Him?” Eigerman asked.

The answer was always yes.

“I’ll be your eyes.”

Then Eigerman volunteered. “We’ll go together.”

Nobody else wanted the evidence Ashbery offered, there were too many nonsenses to be accounted for as it was, without adding to the burden on reality. The authorities gladly let Eigerman have custody of the priest. They deserved each other, was the common opinion. Not one sane cell between them.

Ashbery was utterly dependent on Eigerman: incapable, at least at the beginning, of feeding, shitting or washing without help. Repugnant as it was to tend the imbecile, Eigerman knew Ashbery was a God-given gift. Through him he might yet revenge himself for the humiliations of Midian’s last hours. Coded in Ashbery’s rantings were clues to the enemy’s whereabouts. With time he’d decipher them.

And when he did oh when he did there would come such a day of reckoning the Last Trump would pale beside.

The visitors came by night, stealthily, and took refuge wherever they could find it.

Some revisited haunts their forebears had favoured; towns under wide skies where believers still sang on Sunday, and the picket fences were painted every spring. Others took to the cities: to Toronto, Washington, Chicago, hoping to avoid detection better where the streets were fullest, and yesterday’s corruption today’s commerce. In such a place their presence might not be noticed for a year, or two or three. But not forever. Whether they’d taken refuge in city canyon or bayou or dust bowl none pretended this was a permanent residence. They would be discovered in time, and rooted out. There was a new frenzy abroad, particularly amongst their old enemies the Christians, who were a daily spectacle, talking of their martyr and calling for purges in His name. The moment they discovered the Breed in their midst the persecutions would begin again.

So, discretion was the by-word. They would only take meat when the hunger became crippling, and only then victims who were unlikely to be missed. They would refrain from infecting others, so as not to advertise their presence. If one was found, no other would risk exposure by going to their aid. Hard laws to live by, but not as hard as the consequences of breaking them.

The rest was patience, and they were well used to that. Their liberator would come eventually, if they could only survive the wait. Few had any clue as to the shape he’d come in. But all knew his name. Cabal, he was called. Who Unmade Midian. Their prayers were full of him. On the next wind, let him come. If not now, then tomorrow.

They might not have prayed so passionately had they known what a sea-change his coming would bring. They might not have prayed at all had they known they prayed to themselves. But these were revelations for a later day. For now, they had simpler concerns. Keeping the children from the roofs at night; the bereaved from crying out too loud; the young in summer from falling in love with the human. It was a life.