Death of an Adept

Chapter Thirty-Six

A dazzling searchlight-beam from the chopper scythed down the chapel's length, a second raking the burial ground to the south. Raeburn ducked to a half-crouch with a short-bitten oath, warding his eyes as the first beam swept back. His henchmen likewise cowered from the light's revelation, but they did not abandon their hold on the black priest as automatic-weapons fire peppered the night and the chopper lifted slightly to the north, suddenly trailing abseiling ropes. Though Adam immediately lost sight of it, new hope surged in his breast as he heard the heavier chatter of return fire. But he knew he still could die before his rescuers reached him. And even if Raeburn did not kill him, Soulis had already marked him for his own.

In that instant, however, Soulis was no longer fixed on his chosen prize. Apparently oblivious to the implications of late twentieth-century technology, he darted closer to Raeburn and extended taut hands over the black priest's heaving chest.

"Strike here!" he cried. "Strike now! You must release the power by which I may destroy this demon!"

His voice cracked like a whip. Startled into obedience, Raeburn hauled himself upright, arm cocked back with the dagger in his hand, and plunged the blade downward into the black priest's heart.

The body of the sacrifice arched violently on the altar, his piercing scream momentarily masking even the gunfire. Beside him, Adam flinched from the backlash of power suddenly being channelled through the dagger, sluggishly dragging his unbound arm upward to shield his eyes. Raeburn's men likewise cringed, releasing their holds on the victim; but as the priest's body spasmed in mortal agony, Raeburn himself held firm, bearing down on the dagger white-knuckled, eyes blazing and lips drawn back in a rictus of anticipation.

A brooding rumble shook the ground as the dagger drank the last spark of life-energy from the sacrifice. In that instant, the blade became a conduit for an inrush of power so potent that its kiss all but took Raeburn's breath away. The taste of empowerment was ravishing. Still clinging to the dagger, Rae-burn threw back his head in a moan of mingled pain and delight as his body was gripped by a trembling ecstasy.

The engine-roar of the helicopter had receded to a whistling, whuffing sound as it settled on the burying ground to the north of the chapel, its searchlights now stabbing horizontally across the snow, splashing against the plywood hoardings, arching over the chapel like a roof. Adam could not see it, for the hoardings blocked his view in that direction even as they blocked the view of his would-be rescuers; but as he tried to lift his head, still cringing from the body of the now dead priest, he wondered whether he had the strength to roll off the edge of the altar - though to do so would move him closer to Soulis, still inhabiting lolo McFarlane's body; and to stay, left him within reach of Raeburn, who might yet choose to kill Adam as he had the priest, both to exact his revenge and to try augmenting his power even more.

But variables were shifting too fast for Adam to keep up, in his dazed condition. As automatic-weapons fire again shattered the night, off to the south, Soulis drew back a pace from the altar, a malicious smile contorting his lips as his hands sketched a sequence of ritual gestures too swift and intricate for Adam's eyes to follow, the while muttering a harsh incantation.

In the next instant, the body Soulis wore was overtaken by a violent convulsion. lolo's mouth gaped, his hands groping forth blindly to catch on the edge of the altar as blue smoke poured from his lips in a vomitous stream. As the vacated body crumpled, Soulis' essence reared up in a ghostly column of flame-eyed shadow, infernal fire pulsing at its heart.

A hoarse shriek from Angela warned Raeburn's other accomplices of danger from within as well as without, for the shadow that now was Soulis surged up from the foot of the altar to blanket the still-twitching body of the black priest like a lightless shroud. Adam managed to shift his left leg off the side of the altar, cringing as far from Soulis as he could, but he had not the strength to roll all the way off. As the dead man's lips began to move in the whispered syllables of a further incantation, Adam tried again to throw himself clear. Rae-burn, only now recovering from his unholy rapture, sagged dazedly against the head of the altar, with the dagger clasped to his breast, apparently oblivious to Adam, Soulis, or even another exchange of automatic-weapons fire outside the confines of the chapel - though he flinched as a thunderous boom rocked the ground underfoot.

Even as the echoes were still reverberating, a squat, wild-eyed creature suddenly materialized behind the altar, as if out of nowhere, wearing the form of a gnarly, bandy-legged old man with bare, sinewy arms and a gaping mouth full of carious yellow fangs. Clothed in a loincloth and mantle of ragged skins, his grizzled head was crowned with a filthy red cap - by which token Adam could have no doubt that Soulis had summoned his dreadful familiar, the cannibal-spirit known in Scottish folklore as Robin Redcap.

With a hideous gloating laugh, Redcap made a bound for Raeburn's nearest acolyte, oblivious to the several shots the man managed to get off, and ripped out his throat with a single snap of powerful jaws. Pausing only to fling the body aside, Redcap wheeled around and charged next at Raeburn, blood glistening on his hairy cheeks and down his chest.

The impact of the charge broke Raeburn's grip on the dagger. Juggling the knife in a vain attempt to retain it, he bowled backward under a heavy blow that sent him reeling to the ground on the altar's other side, even as Redcap seized the dagger's bloodied hilt in taloned fingers and held it triumphantly aloft, chuckling throatily to himself. Simultaneously, the shadow that was Soulis surged upward to wrap shadow-hands over those of Redcap.

Shrinking from this combined abomination, Adam summoned every shred of strength he could muster and at last managed to fling himself sideways off the altar-slab, his fall cast askew by the cord still binding his left wrist to the wrought-iron candlestick, which toppled with him. He landed heavily atop the crumpled form of lolo McFarlane and tried to make himself invisible by flattening himself as much as possible, his free arm upflung to protect the back of his head as the candlestick fell across both of them.

Above him and behind the altar, Soulis and Redcap merged together in a blur of sulphur and shadow. Out of that blur two harsh voices called out as one in cacophonous invocation. Amid the ringing chaos of otherwise unintelligible syllables, Adam heard the name Taranis - warning that the unholy pair were uniting their powers to summon the dark Lord of Lightning.

Their voices rose to a screaming crescendo. In that instant the air above the altar was riven by a blinding bolt of blue-white lightning.

Outside the chapel, crouching low behind a snow-covered tomb stone, McLeod paused to draw breath as he shoved a fresh clip into the butt of his Browning Hi-Power. The flash and chatter of automatic-weapons fire continued to punctuate the darkness beyond the chapel, and bullets had splintered portions of the plywood hoardings ahead. He was about to hail Ian Duart, huddled a few yards to his left, when a low rumble drew his attention to an uncanny break in the clouds overhead.

In the space of a single breath, the break deepened to a fathomless rift, from which shot a sudden crackling lightning-blast that struck behind the hoardings, briefly lighting the night in an actinic glare. An accompanying backlash of wind bowled over two of Duart's men.

McLeod stared at the chapel aghast, for the bolt seemed to have struck very near to the altar area where they had spotted Adam from the air. Collecting himself, and keeping his head down, he bolted for Duart, ducking as a spatter of bullets ricocheted off a nearby tombstone.

"We've got to get in there now!" he rasped, gripping the major by the sleeve.

"I'm working on it," Duart replied.

A whistle and a shout from him sent members of the rescue team darting across the snow, firing as they ran, but return gunfire drove them to ground. Tracking the muzzle flashes back to a dark shape briefly silhouetted against the glare within the chapel, McLeod squeezed off three well-aimed shots and had the satisfaction of seeing his target go down with a cry.

Twenty yards behind McLeod, tightly clutching her medical bag as she sheltered behind a tree, Ximena eyed the advancing SAS men and made a move to follow, but Peregrine grabbed her arm and pulled her back.

"Not yet!" he warned. "You've got to give the experts time to clear the way. And for God's sake, keep your head down! If I let anything happen to you, Adam would never forgive me."

"And I will never forgive you if you let anything happen to him!" she retorted, rounding on him with suppressed ferocity. "Are you coming or aren't you?"

Before he could remonstrate, she darted away from him. With an inner groan, he sprang after her. More bullets peppered the snow around them as they caught up with McLeod in the shelter of one of the parked Land Rovers. Peregrine was just going to ask about the possibility of creating a diversion, when the clouds overhead convulsed, spitting another searing shaft of lightning into the confines of the chapel.

Lancing like a javelin at the dagger upthrust by Soulis and Redcap, the lightning of Taranis briefly lit the night like the sun at noon, boiling upward from the blade in a crackling blaze of fire-arcs. Exultantly, the shadow that was Soulis rose up to bathe in the unearthly rain of energy, taking ever more substantial form. United with his master in possession of the dagger, Redcap likewise strained upward to drink in his share of the lightning's might.

Raeburn's remaining henchmen broke and ran, preferring to face the SAS rather than what Soulis had called forth. Shadow-head backflung in ecstasy, Soulis cried out to the heavens, demanding more power, which continued to course through the dagger sacred to Taranis.

Dazzled and deafened, still fettered to the candlestick and too weak to free himself, Adam continued to cower at the base of the altar, his body sheltering lolo's. Above him, just visible if he strained his neck backward, he could catch only a glimpse of the tip of the upheld dagger, now glowing white-hot in the fire of Taranis' might, beginning to melt under the strain of channelling so much energy. As the metal slagged, molten gouts rained down on the altar-top and on the body of the black priest, and greasy smoke began to billow upward in earthly echo of the very hell-fires whose retribution the priest had courted by betraying his holy vows and daring to mock his office.

The heat intensified - welcome warmth to Adam's half-frozen body, but his peril was no less for that, only different. As he clawed vainly at the knots still binding his left wrist, another dull explosion bowled him over again, heralding the final destruction of the blade.

A sulphurous wind swept the chapel bounds as the shadow-form of Soulis reared ever larger, flushing the last of the defenders from their coverts. Redcap could not be seen. More daring than her male counterparts, Angela made a furtive bid to retrieve the discarded chalice, only to fling it from her with a scream as the heated metal scorched her hands.

As she, too, bolted into the darkness, Adam craned his neck after her, trying to see where she had gone. Unable to locate Raeburn either, and desperate to get as far away as possible from what was happening on the other side of the altar, he hauled himself upright enough to try picking with his teeth at the knots imprisoning his wrist, though the effort made his head reel, and he was on the verge of passing out. He could only hope that if McLeod and his other would-be rescuers did succeed in breaking through, they would not be instantly overwhelmed by the infernal forces that had been summoned here.

The glut of power had enlarged Soulis' presence until the boundaries of Raeburn's circle could no longer contain it. Inflated to monstrous proportions, his shadow-form flexed and then burst free. Outside, crouched down behind the Land Rover, Peregrine watched in dumb astonishment as a heavy black cloud mushroomed upward and spread itself like a greasy canopy between the ground and the sky.

''What, in God's name, is that?" he breathed, as Ximena buried her face against his shoulder.

"I don't think God has much to do with it," McLeod muttered in reply. "Take a closer look."

Following the line of the inspector's pointing finger, Peregrine saw that the cloud had eyes - twin lamps of infernal fire that flickered hungrily this way and that, as if searching for something to devour. Even as they watched, horrified, it began drifting westward into the darkness.

"It has to be some demon of Raeburn's summoning," McLeod continued in a tight voice. "Or maybe Soulis himself, somehow transformed. Pray God it wasn't at the expense of Adam; we've got to find him! And if Raeburn called that thing, I expect we're going to have to get at Raeburn to send it back."

As he was speaking, Duart ghosted out of the shadows behind them to crouch alongside.

"I think we've got the perimeter secured," he said. "My men have several prisoners. You ready to go get Sinclair?"

Summoning Peregrine and Ximena to follow, McLeod trotted after Duart toward the end of the hoardings. They were almost abreast of a gap when a clumsy shape suddenly burst out at them, whisking past McLeod with explosive speed. The inspector had a fleeting impression of a grinning, fang-mouthed face surmounted by a red cap before the creature made a break for open ground, bowling Peregrine over in the speed of its passage.

With a startled curse, Duart dropped to one knee and fired several bursts after it, but with no apparent effect. Recovering himself, McLeod set a restraining hand on Duart's arm.

"Save your ammunition," he ordered. "Finding Adam is our first priority."

The chapel's interior was awash with firelight behind the hoardings. First to make cautious entry, McLeod was not surprised to note a line of blood traced around the perimeter of the foundations, though it had been rubbed out near at hand by the scuffle of many feet. Whatever magical containment field it once had defined, that had since been broken by those attempting to escape from the demon that Raeburn had summoned.

But power of another sort stirred with McLeod's next step, as something seemed almost to shimmer in the air about him, accompanied by a sudden thudding in his head that reverberated behind his eyes. Gasping, he nearly dropped his weapon as he caught at a wall for balance. Peregrine almost trod on his heels.

"Noel?" he cried, as Ximena glanced over in alarm.

"I'm all right," McLeod said dazedly. "There's - ah - another Presence here, wanting in."

"What?" Ximena murmured, as Peregrine gripped the inspector's shoulder in alarm.

"Well, don't open up to it," the artist said. "We haven't a clue who it is!"

Just then, as Duart and one of his men slipped into the chapel to secure it, weapons at the ready, Ximena stifled a cry and pointed past them, eyes wide.

"Look!" she cried. "There!"

At the base of the altar, just visible through screening fire and smoke, two bodies could be seen sprawled one atop the other in the snow, a dark-haired and naked one sheltering another, who was, partially shrouded in a filthy white robe. One arm of the naked one was stretched taut above his head, caught all too close to the flames that were eating down a black altar-cloth spilling from the ruined altar above their heads.

"Adam!" McLeod cried, breaking into a run as the others, too, dashed after him, Peregrine muttering, "Dear God!"

"You two tend to Adam and the other one!" the inspector shouted to Ximena, himself ripping at the burning altar-cloth and starting to trample out the flames.

As Peregrine grabbed up a pair of blankets discarded amid a tangle of overturned chairs nearby, Ximena threw herself down beside her husband's prostrate form, thrusting trembling fingers hard against the side of his neck.

"He's breathing, and I've got a pulse," she reported, "but only just. He's probably in shock."

"Can I move him enough to get a blanket under him?" Peregrine asked, as she shifted to check the other figure. "He's lying in the snow."

"Try to untie his hand first, until I can check whatever other injuries he may have."

McLeod meanwhile scrambled to help Ximena turn the white-robed figure Adam had been shielding.

"It's young McFarlane!" he exclaimed.

"Is he dead?" Peregrine asked, worrying at the knots at Adam's wrist.

"No, but he isn't in great shape," Ximena replied, as Duart made his way over to them, accompanied by one of his men.

"We've found our missing Druid," McLeod announced. "They're both alive, but we could use your medic to assist."

"He's on his way," Duart replied, listening to his headset. "The second pilot took a hit, but - "

As he spoke, the night was pierced by the mechanical whine of a helicopter starting up - but coming from the other side of the chapel from where the Lynx had landed.

"What the devil?" Duart muttered, as his trooper swung his MP5 in that direction and broke into a run.

Simultaneously, automatic-weapons fire chattered from the vicinity of the sound, but the engine noise strengthened even as Duart, too, swung on his heel and started toward it, only to almost collide with Harry and another SAS man.

"Sorry, boss," the trooper panted, "but a couple of these bastards managed to get to their chopper. Kinsey is cranking up ours."

As he spoke, Raeburn's helicopter rose up from the north side of the chapel in a boiling whirlwind of snow and immediately headed west. Shouting to make himself heard over the noise of the engine, Harry, said, "Want me to do something about this? Sounds like you're down one pilot."

Duart peered at him through eyes narrowed against the gale. "D'you think you're up to it?"

"Up to it?" Harry retorted with a tight grin. "Remind me to show you my Falkland medals someday, laddie. Or come and watch me put a Spit through her paces."