his jaw. He was handsome but looked ordinary. He wore expensive clothing from centuries ago, the silk and velvet revealing he was a man of wealth. At his side was a sword sheathed in an ornate scabbard encrusted with jewels.
He affected a small bow. ‘Allow me to introduce myself,’ he said, the accent originally from the Valencia region of Spain. ‘My name is Alphonse deMarco. Welcome to my home for the past few hundred years.’
Sounding like a thousand cicadas waking simultaneously the figures on the pews and on the walls began their struggle to get free with renewed energy. The noise was almost deafening but deMarco had no difficulty in making his voice heard.
‘You are curious, naturally, especially you, Mr. Carter, as to why I have gone to such lengths to attract you here. Such elaborate planning, such extreme effort to recruit people you might wish to…to save. People like Mrs. Talbot.’ He flung his arm out to the right and Carter and the others automatically flicked their eyes in that direction.
Laid out on the altar, smothered in the hazy material, was Jane Talbot. Her eyes were opened, and she was tearing at the coverings. Her eyes were staring at Carter.
Carter began to move forwards but deMarco held up a hand to indicate he should stay where he was. ‘All in good time; a time to reap and a time to sow, as your good book says.’
‘If it’s me you wanted why did you have to…’
‘Why take Miss Davies, Mrs. Talbot…why take the many hundreds I have recruited through the centuries? The dear ladies ensured you would grace me with your presence; the others…the others are my soldiers, my army. I have been collecting them, recruiting and storing them, here in my humble cathedral; waiting for the moment when I can unleash them on my enemies.’
Bayliss stepped forward tentatively. ‘How can you have enemies? Those you fought are long dead, and no one else has ever heard…’
DeMarco laughed, and for an instant the writhing figures on the walls and the pews were still. ‘Please don’t accuse me of nonentity, Mr. Bayliss, it doesn’t sit well with my ego. You have heard of me, with your ceaseless research, though I accept that the world at large is unfamiliar with my name…for now.’ He walked a couple of steps from the altar and Bayliss shrank back. ‘Ask in the corridors of the Vatican, ask His Holiness, even now, even after centuries have passed, and my name is known.’
DeMarco allowed a cold smile to twist his mouth. He raised a hand and snapped two fingers.
The huge room seemed suddenly to be active, yet Carter couldn’t immediately see anyone or anything. At least nothing that stayed still long enough for him to identify it. The writhing figures were frantic with action now, some beginning to tear free of their bindings. In dark corners beyond the nave, hidden by stone pillars and arches, scuttling shadows darted about.
A sound like liquid flesh squeezing and pulling made him look upwards. From the ceiling indistinct shadows were erupting above his head and dropping like rain. Globules of darkness forced their way out through the wood and the plaster until they were in the open, and as they floated down they coalesced into shapes that were nearly human.
Then a large shadow fell upon him from behind and he was pulled to the floor. In the increasing blackness Carter thought he could see a black-robed form lying motionless on the floor beside Jane, holding her. Candles flickered around them, and quiet, frightened figures tried to hide in the shadows. The robed form had the shape of a man but was no longer a man. There was no face, just ruffles of hanging white skin, crinkled like paper, no eyes, and no mouth. The black robes hung deformed from the shriveled body, wasted, lifeless. The figure was like a cloud of smoke formed into a man-creature, a withered husk on the brink of death.
Carter felt pressure around his neck, as cold claws clamped into his skin. Talon fingers gripped the flesh, cutting deep, drawing out blood. He swung and turned to try to prize the fingers from him, and as he turned he saw what was attached leechlike to his neck. It was large, folded wings hanging to the ground, misshapen horns protruding from the head. The skeletal arms wrapped around Carter were covered in coarse black hair that had worn away in places, to reveal dark, paper-thin skin.
As Carter struggled against the creature he began to feel weaker, and the shadows reflected his weakness. And as the beast was draining the life from him, so the figure on the ground was stirring into new life, the black robes filling and swelling as Carter drifted into the darkness. All the time Jane lay quietly conscious, but her mind was switched off from the horror she was watching.
McKinley opened his mind and sent flashes of power surging into the creature attacking Carter. At the same time he probed into Carter’s brain, trying to send additional strength.
Carter felt the grip of the talons weaken as McKinley’s psychic surges began to take effect. He stoked energy in his brain, letting it coil like a snake until with a fierce flash he poured it into the creature. At once the skeletal arms fell away and the wings drooped to the floor.
By the altar the stirring figure lay still, larger than before but seemingly still weak.
DeMarco looked concerned, and a look of almost fondness masked his face. He turned to Carter, barely glancing at the creature floundering in the aisle. ‘My…my friend, Prime,’ he said, indicating the altar. ‘He has not survived the years as well as I.’
Carter kneaded the back of his neck. The claws had opened a wound but it didn’t feel too deep. Kirby took off her sweatshirt and was dabbing at the blood. ‘It’s just superficial. So long as there isn’t any infection.’
The creature that had attacked Carter still flopped on the floor. Kirby stood over it, raised one leg, and brought her foot down on the throat. Moments later, after she leaned all her weight into it, there was a snap of bone.
DeMarco turned and looked all about the cathedral. The shadowed figures that had seeped from the ceiling were pulling at the webbing on the walls, tearing it from the hooks that held it in place. As the material tore, the figures captured within were able to jump free, onto the stone floor, where they milled about like a crowd at a railway station. They made very little sound; Bayliss watched them for a few moments until he realized what was strange about them. Although they were clearly all human beings, men, women, some young, others older, and all were naked, there was blankness in their eyes. It was as if they were dead but hadn’t been told to lie down.
McKinley probed into the minds of some on the pews nearest to him — numbness rather than emptiness. It was a kind of suspended life that hovered between existence and death itself.
‘A technique I found in Haiti,’ deMarco said. ‘Not yet tested in battle but I have no fears about its efficiency. We have done several tests.’
When all the people on the walls had been released the gray-shrouded figures began to free those in the pews. Soon there would be thousands of them, silent but waiting.
‘When I say Prime has not fared as well as I have, I omit to reveal I do have a slight advantage. Prime is of course only human.’ DeMarco let a strange expression settle on his face, neither a smile nor a frown. It was the kind of expression that speaks of acceptance, of the end of resistance. He made a movement that looked as if he was scratching the back of his neck. Gradually the skin around his lips seemed to loosen. The folds of skin on his neck draped forward like a woman letting a silk nightdress slide to the floor. The shifting of his skin was accompanied by the most odd noise — the sound of wet tissue paper being folded, very quiet, very soft. The skin on his head flopped forwards onto his chest. With imperceptible movements behind his back deMarco continued to ripple his skin away from his body so that after a few moments it fell in rivulets from his waist. Still it continued to cascade away from him, the sound of faint tearing joined now by sighs of almost sensual pleasure. Carter realized the sounds were coming from the creatures around him, a kind of worship. As the skin finally peeled from the torso and dropped obscenely without a sound to the floor Carter was astounded when he bent casually, picked it up like a discarded towel, and hung it from a hook on the wall. What was left, without the cloak of human skin, was a nightmare.
There have been many depictions of the Devil over the years, from horned goat-beast, to sophisticated man about town. What stood in front of them was nothing at all like the artwork, nothing seen in the movies.
The face was ghostly pale, life long since extinct. Tatters of raw skin hung from the forehead and cheeks as if torn billboard posters that advertised an event that was a vaguely restored memory. Thin tufts of hair coated the bloated skull, coarse and gray and congealed at the sides where there should have been ears. Instead of ears a pair of thick, dark brown horns pointed upwards and slightly forwards. The body was heavy at the chest, bulging with muscle; beneath the ribs and across the stomach the skin protruded outwards where things captured inside the body were pushing for escape. Simian arms folded across the knees of legs that were powerful and long. The
