The Messiah Choice

15. THE MESSIAH CHOICE

“When is this all taking place, Reggie?” MacDonald asked him. “The witching hour of midnight?” He was still amazed at being alive, and amazed, too that being alive now disturbed him so much.

“Oh, that’s rubbish. They have all their leaders here, you know—kings of African tribes and Himalayan principalities, ministers from many countries, all that. They’ll give them a real show before the climax, from their point of view. They have until the crack of dawn, as I understand it. His power wanes in the daylight.”

“But not SAINT.”

“No, not SAINT.”

“How come you’re not down there watching it all, or running around fixing up our damage?”

“I’m very tired, and stick of all this, frankly. They are taking the scientific breakthrough of the century, perhaps for thousands of years, and turning it into a mumbo-jumbo circus. As for SAINT—the sort of work you are talking about is heavy stuff, best done by the staff. When it’s ready to be operational again, I’ll have to check it all out I suppose.”

“Why?”

“What? What do you mean by that?”

“Exactly that. Has it occurred to you, Reggie, that you’re not really one of them? They needed you as the front to get their stuff installed in the computer, and they needed you up to now as insurance. But once they have this done, once SAINT and Angelique are one, the computer will be in complete control and you’ll be like the revolutionary that puts the dictator in power. His friends know how to wage a revolt and topple a government, and they have expectations when their man is in. So, the first thing the dictator does is wipe out his friends who put him there—if he wants to survive himself. It’s called a purge, Reggie.”

Sir Reginald nervously took a cigarette from a silver case and lit it. It took him two tries. “That’s ridiculous. Oh, I admit I’ve been used, but I’ve gotten a lot out of it as well. They still need me. No one but me could have located that diabolical erasure program Sir Robert snuck in with a mass of accounting data. Not even SAINT could remember or find it—but I did.”

“And you totally deactivated it just in case we killed Angelique while she was in our hands. Clever. Now it fears nothing. As soon as it enters into Angelique, it’ll have only one human being, one in the whole world, it actually fears, because there will be only one man it doesn’t own who can harm it. You, Reggie. I don’t think I’m going to live to see that dawn, but by god you aren’t, either. When it’s sure, if it works, you’ll be the first item on its agenda. You’re the ultimate sucker. You sold your soul for knowledge, but they always leave loopholes, don’t they, eh? They always have an out. The very knowledge you gave them is the very same knowledge that they can’t afford to have loose any more. Your only hope is that the project fails. The possibility of that is the only reason you’re still alive now.”

“You think I’m stupid?” he snapped. “Do you take me for a dunce? I figured that out long ago! That’s why the erasure program is still there. Oh, I deactivated it all right, but I left in a code I could give to have it be carried out anyway. They know it’s there—I told them, truthfully, that we’d have to shut down half of its core memory to get it out—but they don’t know that it’s not dead.” He looked smug. “Now what do you think of that?”

“Well, Reggie, I’m impressed—but can’t SAINT hear and see in this room, too? Didn’t you just tell him how he could die? And didn’t you just say that the only man who knew that code was you?” MacDonald pressed, sensing an opening he never expected and pushing it for all it was worth with the one weapon left to him. “Any chance you had of surviving before just went out the window.”

Sir Reginald suddenly got up and looked around nervously. All was quiet in the eerie emergency lighting, although there were dead bodies all over. MacDonald could see it in his face, though, and in the way he looked around, that the computer genius was suddenly more terrified than tired.

“I’m afraid he’s right, Sir Reginald,” said the smooth, unhurried voice of the computer from a wall speaker. “The truth is, up to now no decision had been made on you. Call me—sentimental, if you will. Now, though, I fear Mr. MacDonald has done you in, although in so doing he has done me an inadvertent service.”

Sir Reginald picked up the pistol with its two strange clips. “SAINT! I created you!” he shouted, his voice echoing against the walls. “No one else could have done so! I—I did more than create you! I loved you!”

“You did indeed create the machine,” SAINT admitted, “but it was only a shell itself, a receptacle for what was to come. Still, in an odd way, I did love you, too. Just wait there. In a moment it will all be over, and you will be with me forever.”

“Reggie! You don’t have to stand there and die like a dog!” MacDonald shouted, cursing his inability to move. There was the sound of footsteps coming down the stairs from above. “Damn it, man! Think logically! If there’s hell and a return from the grave, then there’s God in heaven, too! You still have a chance, Reggie! Give the damned code!”

Two red-clad men appeared, bearing rifles. Sir Reginald shot both of them with the pistol, which gave a sound like a short burp, and they went down for good. He turned and looked frantically around. “I—I can’t! I need a terminal! It can block the rest by simply preventing the code from reaching its banks through the audible sensors!”

He looked around as the sound of more footsteps approached, and made for the door down to SAINT itself. The terminals both upstairs and on this level were totally under SAINT’s own electronic controls, but downstairs there was a direct input terminal, one which SAINT couldn’t foul up or shut down without shutting down part of itself.

SAINT tried to slide shut the door, but it hung up on the body of the technician who’d been with the Dark Man and didn’t have the living corpse’s immunity to bullets. Neither did Reggie, though, and bullets flew and pinged off the walls as he slipped through and ran down the stairs to the next level two at a time.

“Reggie loved Daddy!” Sir Reginald screamed as he ran. “Daddy hates Geoff!” They were simple words, key words, but he’d been right. The computer shut down its speaker inputs at the first words. The only hope he had now was the direct input terminal in the small glass-enclosed booth just outside of SAINT itself. But in shutting down its sensors, the computer had also shut itself off from direct help in its own survival. It had to rely on human help.

There! He was within sight of it, breathing hard. The glass booth with the one unstoppable entry into SAINT. He reached it! He reached the door, an old-fashioned door with a simple knob latch, and started to open it.

Bullets from men and women in red uniforms both on his level and from below cut through him, splattering the glass exterior with blood, although they did not penetrate the special protective glass of the walls. He took so many shots in his body that before he hit the ground he almost looked as bad as his brother.

MacDonald just sat there, unable to do anything, hearing the muffled sound of the shots below. Suddenly four big men came up from the fourth level and over to him.

“He didn’t make it,” one said casually. “Come on. They’ve decided you’re part of the show. The boss wants you down there.”

“I can’t resist, but I can’t move, either,” he pointed out, cursing under his breath. So close! Each damned time it’s so close and no cigar!

One big man took him under his arms, the other by the feet, and together they carried him through the door and down not one but two more flights, to the fifty level, where SAINT’s refrigeration and small fusion plant were located. The place was quiet and antiseptic, but as they carried him down to the far end of the huge chamber he saw a small crew working on patching a gaping hole through which outside air was rushing in and he grinned. “A little more air conditioning than you want, eh?”

“Shut up or I’ll cut your tongue out,” snapped the big man forward of him. He shut up.

MacDonald was surprised to find one of the small electric carts at the end of the room, and he quickly saw why it might be there. One whole section of wall seemed to have swung outwards and away, revealing an enormous tunnel. The tunnel was lighted with four bright strips going its entire length, and also down it ran thick cables that apparently had been hidden by the wall, coming down as they did through holes drilled in the rock. So Frawley had been right about one thing.

They dumped him unceremoniously in the back of the cart and the big man started down the tunnel. To MacDonald’s surprise, it opened into a fairly large chamber that might have covered the entire base of the meadow. In the center was the huge mass of obsidian that was below ground, going from ceiling to floor and possibly beyond. It was not the cold glassy black it should have been, though; all the cables terminated, it seemed, directly into it, and the whole rock or whatever it was hummed and glowed with an eerie light that filled the entire rock structure. It seemed almost like something alive.

Men and women in brown saffron robes took him from the cart and stripped him naked. He could see that on their foreheads was a symbol that seemed to pulse like strange protruding veins. The six inside the six inside the six. Somebody stuck a gag in his mouth and then they began to rub his whole body with some sort of oil. He couldn’t feel a thing except on his face, where it felt like vaseline. Innterestingly, the one thing they left on him was the chain from which hung the Bishop’s cross.

They took him back to the center rock formation now, lifted him up to his feet, and pressed his entire body hard against it. He felt a tingling, then some vertigo, and then a sudden blackness for just a moment. Then he was outside, in the open air, and he knew just where he was if not how he got there. His head rested on the top of the high point of the altar stone, and he looked both out and down.

The small cup-shaped depression at the low end was filled with red liquid, almost certainly blood. The whole “stone” or whatever it was seemed drenched in it. In back of the stone and running its entire length they had erected a narrow wooden stage-like platform, and there were people on it as well as several enormous idols, each a stylized demonic creature with gaping mouth and goat-like horns and vaguely saurian appearance. Each had some sort of incense or another sweet smelling material burning in their laps, but it gave off far more odor than smoke. Fires lit inside made the eyes and mouths burn and glow.

On either side of the central and largest idol were hung, upside down, the bodies of the Lebanese woman and the Nigerian. They had been stripped and then hung up by their feet like deer carcasses, and their bullet-ridden bodies twisted slowly as if their dull, unseeing eyes might take in the entire scene.

The audience, or congregation, numbered at least a hundred and fifty, which was more than anyone could have imagined being packed into the area of the meadow in front of the stage and stone. Many wore various kinds of robes and costumes, including leopard’s head headdresses and demonic-looking helmets; others wore more traditional dress, from business suits to Middle Eastern garb, flowing white robes and headgear suitable for the desert. They represented all races and habitable continents, and they were the leaders of this new wave, the evil within. Not the presidents and prime ministers, not necessarily the princes and kings, but those who were behind the seats of power, giving advice and manipulating information.

In front of the altar stone, between him and the congregation, a group of naked women whose bodies were painted with all sorts of designs and colors danced a frantic, insane dance that seemed both sexually obscene and somehow animalistic and violent to the chanting of what was, at least to him, an off-stage choir and the frantic beat of drums. He recognized most of them with a start, as the women who’d been Angelique’s staff, some of the wives of the most distinguished permanent administrative staff of the Institute, and others who were young, sensual, and overendowed who might well be ones he’d known now showing off the rewards of converting to the opposition. All had that same throbbing, pulsating symbol on their foreheads.

The Dark Man came over, and knelt down beside his head. No matter that he was both covered and using his electronic distortion disguise, MacDonald tried to shrink from his loathsome touch but could not.

“I thought you deserved a front row seat for the climax of the show.” the Dark Man said to him in a low tone. “Rituals are just good show business but the masses seem to expect them. I will restore feeling to your body, but don’t try and get up. You can’t, and the pain will be great and they’ll eat it up. Look at them. Look at their faces and their eyes. They can hardly wait until they have the power to do this themselves—and they will. Just relax and enjoy it and don’t worry. Killing is not for the likes of you.”

That was what he was afraid of. Still, he felt feeling return to his lower parts, and he found himself able to move his arms and hands a bit. They felt stiff and sore. He did try to rise just a little, though, and the pain in his back was instantly excruciating. He relaxed, and it slowly ebbed away. He wasn’t going anywhere, and he knew it.

The revelry stopped suddenly, and for a moment there was dead silence. The women took places as a sort of honor guard on either side of the stone. At last the Dark Man broke the silence, sounding less like a cult leader than a master of ceremonies at a night club.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, his voice echoing through the meadow and beyond in ghostly fashion, “it is time to pause a moment and consider the basic things for which we stand and the threats we still must face. Here I present a man who several times has come within minutes, perhaps seconds, of destroying all that we have worked so hard to build for our lord and master Lucifer, Angel of Earth, the highest sane creature of the nether realm. Look you here to your right on the platform, and see what he almost accomplished!”

MacDonald struggled to see for himself, and his gasp was audible in the dead silence. On the platform was, unmistakably, the bomb Lord Frawley had been supposed to set off long ago now.

“An atomic device,” the Dark Man explained, causing a stir and ripples through the crowd. “It would have scoured this island clean of life above, and set us back decades at the moment of our ultimate triumph. Oh, don’t worry, it’s fully deactivated now, its heart removed, as it were, but it sits here as testimony that we can not fail!

“Consider,” he continued, his voice rising and falling for emphasis, “that this device was situated so that it would do the most damage, and attached to a dead man’s switch. We did not find it in time! When we did find it, after the attack above, we found it with, of all things, a dead man. An old man, dead perhaps of a heart attack, his death so sudden, so abrupt, that his fingers locked around the trigger so it could not fire! There was a timing device, too, but for some reason he had either not connected it or disconnected it. I suppose he wanted to do it himself.” This caused even more of a nervous stir in the crowd as they realized how close they had come.

Damn Frawley, MacDonald thought in disgust. The climb was too much for his weakened body, but he had to be in full control, a self-centered egomaniac to the end!

The Dark Man laughed in triumph. “But consider, my friends, how this is our time and that we are protected by our Lord even from such as this!” he went on. “Consider the miracles here represented! Our Lord Lucifer crept into his mind and made him disconnect the timer, then struck him with a blow that kept us all safe from harm and our cause totally intact. None can touch us! Our threats are revealed to us by our very enemies, and our Lord watches over where we can not!”

There was a sudden, apparently spontaneous reaction in the crowd. Most dropped to their knees and began to chant, “Blessed be Lucifer, also called Satan, Lord of Earth and the Underworld, wise protector of the universe. May we draw from him our strength and never waiver or fail him in our duty.” It was said in a babel of languages, but one of the women closest to him was an English speaker and he made out the words from her.

The Dark Man turned and pointed to MacDonald. “Behold the man behind it all, whom the enemies of our Lord set against us! Do not be fooled by his position now! He is a most formidable and worthy opponent, a brave challenger who almost succeeded despite a notable lack of help from his god.”

There were some snickers at that from the crowd.

“What is your price, MacDonald?” the Dark Man asked, his voice soft, his tone rhetorical. “Not your life, for you brought that thing here and remained. Not your love, for you made no protest when you could and would have taken her life tonight as well if you could. Not terror, not the dark and the horrible things that lurk in every shadow, for you have faced down a demon and looked into the face of death. Yet, what is it I see in your eyes now? Not terror, no, but something even more foreign to the truly godly. I see hate there. Burning, festering, blistering hate. It feeds upon you. It eats your soul. It turns you, inside, into me! And that, my friends, is the ultimate power. Not magic, not sorcery, not witchcraft, but rather this—that your actions, your deeds, our actions and deeds, turn our enemies into ourselves! The more they fight, the more they become ours.” His voice rose with the litany. “Christian! Jew! Moslem! Hindu! Buddhist! Taoist! Animist!” Suddenly his tone lowered. “Patriot,” he added, then walked back and stood directly over MacDonald.

“So, you see, we cannot lose,” the Dark Man continued. “Either in fighting us they become like us, or like the martyrs of many religions they do nothing and do not resist. The days of Buddha, Jesus, and Mohammed are done because they are bankrupt. More evil has been done by men in their name than has been done in the name of our Lord whom they blame. What sort of prophet, what sort of god, is worth following if the result is a world where even the most starry-eyed idealists would murder a whole population of innocents in the name of the greater good? Let us be done with them. Let them join Zeus, and Jupiter, and the worship of emperors on the ash heap. We are the predatory animals given mastery over a world of brutality. Let us stop fighting our natures, our urges, our inclinations. Let us not agonize and recriminate. We were created the highest of animals, then cursed by god to always fight our unconquerable basic nature. Let us begin here to pull down this world and this mad god and build a new one based upon what we are. Let us banish the very concept of sin, and become like gods.

“For that’s what God fears, my friends. That, knowing all, we can make him irrelevant!.” He suddenly stopped and stared down at MacDonald. “But you would deny the animal, wouldn’t you? Mind over matter. Very well, then. I will show true power, mind over matter, and make a small sacrifice of that which is animal. That we will return to our master.”

MacDonald steeled himself, feeling real fear now, knowing what that terror from beyond the grave could do with the flick of a hand.

He felt the Dark Man’s gloved hand around his genitals and he started to cry out in horror, but suddenly the pain there was so enormous that he shrieked in agony instead.

The Dark Man held up the object for all to see, then turned and fed it into the mouth of the largest idol, which suddenly flamed with extraordinary brightness. “Now he may serve the bride of our lord!” the Dark Man cried triumphantly, and the crowd and the choir began chanting frantically.

MacDonald passed out from shock and pain, but, unfortunately, he came to rather quickly.

When he awoke, he was still stuck, lying on the stone, but the lights were now dimmed and the scenery had changed. A group of hooded and robed people, male and female, now stood before the idols chanting in some impossible tongue, eliciting a response in the same tongue from the congregation at intervals. The Dark Man was out of view, if still in the assemblage.

It was impossible for him to tell just how long he’d been out, but it was still totally dark and he guessed it couldn’t have been very long. He felt no more pain, only an itchy tingling in his groin. He managed to move a hand to the area, and felt only a small lump below which was a hole. Not a vaginal sort of hole, just a cavity about large enough to insert a finger. So it hadn’t been a nightmare or an induced hallucination. He wanted to cry, but not even tears would come. The proceedings seeming like a dream to him. They’d been right, he realized. Angelique, Maria… They’d been right. Everyone has a price, a fear, a secret horror which, if realized, makes even death seem pleasurable. The Dark Man had finally found his own personal demon, his own most secret terror, and had done it; done it with the knowledge that his victim knew that with the demonic mastery over form, it did not have to be permanent—but only the Dark Man could replace it.

But this was the Dark Man’s swan song, he remembered. Tonight the power would be transferred, transferred and multiplied an infinite amount—or at least six to the sixth to the sixth power. Is that what they had in mind for him? A husband as chaste as she?

He was broken and he knew it. He just couldn’t fight them any more. He had tried, tried harder than any could expect of a man, and he’d failed, as they all had failed, and he’d paid a price as dear to him as the innocents before him had paid. At least Frawley and the three mercenaries had been lucky. They were dead. He had no idea where Maria and the Bishop were, but they sure as hell couldn’t get off this island.

The chanting hit a crescendo, and suddenly all the lighting went out. Then, slowly, the meadow itself began to glow, and varicolored lights of some kind of living energy traced complex designs on the grass. There was silence, but in the distance thunder could be heard, thunder all around, and there seemed a swirl of clouds overhead, as if the sky itself were alive and they were in the eye of some terrible hurricane.

A figure now appeared on the stage behind, just in front of the great central idol. The figure of a girl, radiant and fresh, dressed in some transparent white silky garment and nothing else. She knelt before the idol, then arose, turned, and looked out at the congregation. The choir and the women and then the congregation started in another rythmic chant. As they did so, she seemed illuminated, the perfection of her body showing and shining through the flimsy white dress. Her large eyes were open wide, but she seemed to be staring off in the distance, oblivious to the crowd, as if fixed on something only she could see. Her expression was fixed and yet relaxed, but there was no smile, or frown, or other hint to reveal her inner thoughts, if indeed she had any.

“Angelique,” MacDonald whispered, for it was she, and not the primitive she had been reduced to, but the true Angelique, skin fair, eyes greenish, with light, reddish-brown hair flowing down past her shoulders.

And now, above the soft chanting, he heard the Dark Man’s voice.

“In the name of Satan Mekratrig, Lord of the Earth; in the name of Lucifuge Rofocale, Emperor and Supreme Ruler of the Underworld, I charge the Princes of the Throne of Dis to come forward and attend this most sacred rite,” uttered the voice of the Dark Man, booming over the meadow and perhaps the whole of the island.

And, out of the air, there began to materialize—shapes.

They were so bizarre and the effect so fascinating that for a moment even MacDonald could do nothing but stare.

First came Ashtoreth, a great, dark shape outlined in fire, astride a great winged horse; then came Mammon, then Theutus, Asmodeus, Abbadon, and Incubus, and lastly Leviathan, rising majestically in the center upon a great throne. They were grand and awesome and, most incredibly, they were not visions of horror nor demonic nightmares but creatures of tremendous beauty and power and grace. They floated eerily above the meadow, then took their places in a line behind the stage.

A thought, a line from someplace, came unbidden to his mind. How great must Heaven be, if such wonderful and majestic angels can still be so great and beautiful and wondrous after their fall from grace…

And now the very sky was lit with swirling cloudlike forms, and there seemed in the clouds, reflecting the various colors on the grass below, to be great faces, faces of other creatures. Faces of demons, and faces of goat-like creatures with eyes of fire, and faces of creatures so bizarre that man had no words to describe them and no similes he could use.

And the faces spoke as they swirled around the island, in a great single voice, saying, “Blessed are the Princes of Hell, for they shall be restored. Blessed are those who serve, for they shall be given the keys to the universe, and heaven and hell, which are outside the universe.”

“In the name of all those who would serve thee unto final victory, we humbly beseech the Lord of the Earth, the Lord of Hell, the Lord of our creation and the true master of mankind who was created in his image, I ask you to appear and to anoint thy vessel for the trials and tribulations to come,” called the Dark Man, and MacDonald, barely able to turn his eyes from the creatures lined up behind the stage, saw that the speaker was now standing at the other end of the altar stone, just beyond the pool of blood.

“In the name of the candlestick throne, which is yours to claim, we plead with thee to appear to us,” the Dark Man continued.

And now there was a sudden collective gasp and sigh from the crowd, and they all turned and looked towards the Institute. The look on their faces was as if they had beheld the face and form of God Himself; total, complete, abject worship and subjugation. They fell upon the ground, and on each other, because there was so little room.

MacDonald could see a glow from that direction, but was unable to turn and see for himself what all, even the Princes, were seeing.

Angelique, too, turned now, and for the first time there was an expression on her face, a softening, as if all doubts and fears were swept away by one glance at whatever it was that hovered over the Institute, and there was even the trace of a smile on her lips.

“Behold, the Master claims his bride, and anoints her Queen of Earth,” said the Dark Man.

Now MacDonald felt a sudden gathering of heat, and overhead he saw reach out just a tiny corber, just a fraction of what they were seeing, and he was still awe struck. A finger, but a finger of incredible size, glowing with a power and strength and greatness so incredible that it could only be thought glorious. There was total silence, and everyone lay flat, as the finger reached for Angelique.

“IN THE NAME OF THE LORD GOD JEHOVAH, CREATOR OF THE UNIVERSE AND OF LUCIFER HIMSELF, I COMMAND THIS TO HALT! I AM FILLED OF THE HOLY GHOST, AGAINST WHICH NOT EVEN HELL MAY STAND!”

The voice was so loud, so commanding, and such an obvious departure from the script that there was a frozen moment of silence. Even the finger seemed to pause in midair.

MacDonald stared, and saw a strange figure in one of the hooded robes standing between him and the Dark Man on the altar stone, facing Angelique. He turned and discarded the robe, throwing it on the ground, and they saw that it was just a man, a very old man with flowing white hair and still a few bits of black on his face, but dressed in the robe of a Bishop.

Alfred Whitely had a strong, determined look in his eye and a steely expression. He alone among the whole crowd seemed not the least bit awed or impressed by the display to date. The robe looked a little rumpled; he must have taken it in his pack and changed after blowing the antennas.

In his left hand he clutched his old, worn red Bible; in his right he held up a large golden cross that seemed to shine of its own accord.

Whitely ignored the Dark Man, only a few feet from him, and turned instead towards the vision whose finger alone MacDonald could glimpse.

“IT IS NOT YET TIME! BEGONE UNTIL THE BOOK OF LIFE IS FILLED!” the Bishop commanded in a tone and with authority so strong it dwarfed even the Dark Man. He suddenly and quite spryly leaped up onto the stage itself and put himself between the finger and Angelique.

The Dark Man became very confused. He attempted to throw his power and energy at the old man and absolutely nothing happened. Frustrated, he screamed at someone out of sight beyond MacDonald’s head, “You men! He’s just a doddering old fanatic! Shoot him! Shoot him!”

“NO!’’ came a voice that seemed louder than thunder and greater than any human voice could be.

There was a sudden short burst, and three bullets tore into Whitely from the front, knocking him back into Angelique. He smiled, pulled himself back up, and placed a bloody hand on her white dress which was already somewhat spattered. Angelique looked confused, blank, unable to react al all.

The Bishop was mortally wounded, yet he took a pain-wracked step forward, holding out the cross with his right hand, then another, until he was at the great extended finger. Nobody seemed able to move or do anything but watch.

“I’m not afraid of you, Lucifuge Rofocale,” said the Bishop weakly, but determinedly. “I think you are afraid of me!”

Whitely touched the cross to the extended finger, and there was suddenly a tremendous, almost blinding flash of energy. For a moment, it seemed to engulf the Bishop, and then reach beyond him into the ground itself below the stage.

There was a tremendous, mournful howl of pain and outrage from the creature with which he’d joined, a cry so terrible that the very ground shook and the island trembled.

There was a sudden panic, and screams and yells from the assembled multitudes, but MacDonald couldn’t take his eyes off Angelique.

The altar stone shook, and the Dark Man fell off the bottom end, but somehow MacDonald stayed on as if stuck to it. The stage trembled as well, and the idols fell backwards and tumbled off with a crash. Suddenly a small form darted onto the stage, dressed in black, and pushed Angelique down onto the altar stone just as the stage itself collapsed. The tiny figure removed something from around its neck and put it over Angelique’s head, then looked up at him.

“Maria,” he croaked.

The entire island was shaking as if it were about to fracture itself apart, and trees began to topple. There was a strong odor of rotten eggs, and then from the ground all around plumes of steam erupted with great fury.

Maria came up to him and he heard her even above the roar. “Tough shit, Greg, but I told you not to come. The old boy was right after all, huh? I’d like to stay, but maybe I can make it off this sucker before it blows. If not, I sure paid back my dues!” She kissed him and jumped off the rock and started running into the trees.

Angelique lay there, half in the pool of blood, eyes closed, as the whole island continued to shake. He wanted to get to her, to try and get them both off, but he still couldn’t move.

All around now there seemed a great fog of white, yet in the white there seemed to be shapes, strange shapes not unlike those of the cloud and the Princes, yet somehow different, brighter, cleaner. They were solid, humanoid, yet they seemed to grow out of the clouds and be yet a part of them. None was still long enough for him to get a clear view, but he knew they were all around.

There were the sounds of people screaming in pain and panic, screams which seemed to be progressively stilled.

And still he and Angelique were stuck to that damned rock!

He sensed a presence behind him and perhaps a bit above him, but he couldn’t turn his head to see who or what it was. He couldn’t be sure, but he thought he heard a clear, joyous voice, one that was very familiar.

“Without a willingness to sacrifice, mankind is not worth saving from Hell or from himself,” something whispered in what sounded very much like Whitely’s voice. “Without shedding of blood there is no remission of sin. Take care, son. We’ve won the battle, but the war goes on.”

“My Lord Bishop!” he croaked, and reached out a hand to the air, but there was nothing, nothing there at all.

And now a tremendous blast of heat and flame roared down from the top of the mountain and engulfed not only the pair on the altar stone but also the whole of the island, and he could see the entire jungle ablaze before he passed out from its effects, this time for a very long time.