Gradually, though an eternity seemed to pass, the fury of the storm began to weaken. Still the Huntsmen held their net. But finally, even when Adam lifted his arms to Soulis in cautious enticement, still obviously helpless, the lightning-play died back to an exhausted flicker, the thunder subsiding to a sullen, intermittent growl.
The quarry now was run to ground. The storm-force of his malice was largely spent. Even so, Soulis was still a dangerous opponent, as insanely destructive as a rabid dog. Gratefully shedding his aspect as victim, Adam gathered back his defenses and once again clothed himself in the celestial hue of his office. As he took up his sword, he scanned the astral darkness at the edges of the Huntsmen's circle. The astral storm had yielded to the darkness of normal nighttime, but off to his right, a lingering blur of shadow crouched down in a hollow. By the sulphuric quality of its density, Adam knew it at once for the disembodied essence of Soulis.
Holding his sword at the ready, he slowly advanced on Soulis' position. Likewise arming themselves, the astral forms of his companions fanned out on either hand, as together they made to draw tight the web they had woven.
Soulis fathomed their intentions in an instant. Rising up in a vaguely humanoid pillar of fiery smoke, he made a furtive attempt to bolt, only to find the way blocked by Christopher's sword. Wheeling, he tried another route - this time blocked by Philippa and Peregrine. John Graham stood ready when he turned another way. By then the trap was unmistakable - and inescapable.
"We must return him now to the place where he first was summoned," Adam instructed those with him. "Be careful, though. He fears the swords, but he still has sufficient spite to do us harm."
With Adam and McLeod directing the endeavor, the circle of astral Huntsmen began chivvying their quarry back toward that physical counterpart of the astral door through which Soulis had made his entry into time and space. Soulis did not submit gracefully to being driven. Pulsing with rage, no longer able to hold any semblance of humanoid form, he lunged and surged in an attempt to wreak some injury, but his adversaries forced him steadily toward the astral reflection of the ruined chapel.
An echo of the chapel's physical appearance took shape on the Inner Planes. Retreating before Soulis to mark the way in, Adam became momentarily distracted by the sight of Ximena standing up beside his own inert body, adjusting one of the IVs hanging from the wrought-iron candlestick. Peregrine was seated cross-legged against the side of the altar with Adam's head cradled in his lap, and McLeod/Kerr knelt beside him. Adam was about to return his attention to the astral, when another figure dragged itself upright from behind the wreckage of the altar slab, black-robed and fair of hair.
Raeburn!
And the black Adept had a pistol in the hand he was raising, his face transfixed with malice as he took careful aim at the back of Ximena's averted head.
"No!"
Adam's cry of horror made itself heard on both levels. Still in possession of McLeod's body, Kerr started upward but then hesitated - for if he fell, there was none to do to Soulis what must be done. But Peregrine was already in motion as well, letting Adam's head drop to the ground with stunning force as he rolled to tackle Ximena about the knees without a second thought, throwing her to the ground even as Raeburn's shot exploded. It missed both of them - and Soulis' harsh exclamation precluded a second try.
You! Lynx-Master! Soulis rumbled, as he surged up onto the altar in a darkly sparkling cloud like a tornado funnel. Give me the use of your body and I will reduce these enemies of ours to ashes!
Raeburn recoiled hard against the wall behind him, his pale eyes wild as he swung the muzzle of his pistol toward Soulis.
"No, stay back!" he shouted hoarsely. "I have no wish to join you in the Void. The worst these people can do is kill me. But you would destroy me utterly!"
The shadow that was Soulis stretched tall in its fury.
Then, die, you miserable serf! he howled. And learn that there are worse things than oblivion! Redcap, he is yours!
From out of the shadows at the chapel's edge, a misshapen goblin figure made a sudden leap. Swinging his pistol in that direction, Raeburn was still firing as Redcap seized him and bore him to the ground behind the altar. The gunfire ceased abruptly, with a crunch of shattering bone and a bubbling cry. As Redcap popped back into view with a triumphant cackle, demon eyes blazing, the taloned fingers of one hand were clutched red and dripping around the still palpitating lump of flesh that had been the Lynx-Master's heart.
He thrust it upward in gory salute to Soulis as his flaming gaze shifted to the other humans present in hungry calculation. But in that instant, Kerr heaved McLeod's body to its feet and flung up both hands in orison, crying out the opening words of a powerful incantation.
Redcap shrieked defiance, but a stabbing gesture from Kerr shrank the demon to a spitting, bristling ball of blackness that imploded with a thunderclap, sent back whence it had come. Never missing a beat, Kerr returned his focus to Soulis himself. As his chant piled note upon note and syllable upon syllable, Adam let himself be drawn back on the astral to stand at Kerr's side with his Huntsmen as an oval iris of fluctuating light opened before them out of nowhere, like a window on some distant futurity.
The oval had length and width, but no depth that Adam could see. As it turned toward the shadow that was Soulis, its surface scintillated like a mirror, with flashes of changing imagery. Looking more closely, Adam saw that the images were all changing guises of the same individuaclass="underline" a dark, arrogant man with cruel lips and heavy-lidded eyes. When the shadow-Soulis turned toward the window in sudden, aching yearning, Adam realized that he was seeing reflections of Soulis' future lives as well as past ones.
But all those lives bore the same stamp of depravity, and a greater Wisdom than Adam's had decreed that these were not to be, now or ever. As Adam embraced that certainty, Kerr's incantation underwent a shift, its cadence changing as his voice altered in pitch and intensity.
As the shimmering pane of light continued to revolve just beyond Soulis' yearning reach, there appeared above and behind it a jagged line of darkness that gradually widened, pulling itself apart like a self-inflicted wound. Its presence seemed to tear the fabric of the physical world in two; and beyond the gap lay a black and bottomless eternity.
With a rending shriek, Soulis attempted to dodge away.
"Keep him penned where he is!" Kerr shouted across to Adam.
Sword in hand, Adam leaped to hem Soulis in on the astral. His fellow Huntsmen did the same, hedging him about with their blades. While they held Soulis thus at bay, Kerr approached the mirror-like window in the air, where it hovered just below the mouth of the Void. With a single Word of command, he drove his clenched fist into the window's scintillating center.
The pane of light shattered like glass. Soulis' howl of despair was accompanied by a dissonant clangor of chimes. The gap yawned wider still, like a giant, sucking wound. As the shards of his broken future were engulfed by the darkness, Soulis himself was drawn inexorably after them into the Void.
Screaming, he attempted to cling to the threshold, but his shadowy essence could find no purchase there. Still clawing at empty air, he slipped backwards into the gaping rift. His eyes blazed and died as he fell, his own darkness merging with the greater darkness of the abyss. Then abruptly the rift snapped shut, leaving Adam and his companions alone in an astral chapel filled with echoes that gradually died away.
The silence that followed was like a benison. One by one, giving weary salute to Kerr and Adam, the astral company withdrew across intervening space to rejoin physical bodies, wherever they might lie. Retiring likewise from the field, Adam found himself once again on the high plateau among the clouds, where he was joined a moment later by Kerr.