“Jones!”
The Elite Guard watched, helplessly horrified, at his station in the spy alcove. As the Sabbat continued toward its peak, he grew sick inside, enraged and disgusted—he had helped Nathans in this? How many other things would be clear if he looked at them under a harsher light? He squirmed, sweating and wide-eyed, as Nathans prepared to make the sacrifice of the hapless Servant. He could not see the expression on the man’s face, but Jones imagined any number of them.
Then when the Servant appeared in the audience—Julia! he knew it was Julia—Jones reacted as if someone had struck him a sharp blow. It was utterly incredible even to imagine that she could be here! His world began to swim around his senses again, as if the gears of the universe had just become unmeshed.
Julia!
What was she doing here?
Was this something Nathans had set up? To trap him even further?
“Jones!”
Stunned, he finally heard the frantic tone in the man’s cry. Interminable hours of Enforcer and Elite Guard training overrode his thoughts for a moment, and Jones lurched into motion. He burst out of the alcove onto the stage, fully armored and bristling with weapons.
The crowd gasped again at the sudden appearance of the Elite Guard. Their fear of the Enforcers Guild had nothing to do with their belief in neo-Satanism. And their confusion sank deeper.
“Kill the Servants!” Nathans cried automatically. His voice seemed to be losing its grip on the tone of authority, and it came out with undertones of a manic whimper. The High Priest looked down, as if oddly terrified of the Servant chained on the altar.
Automatically Jones snapped out one of his projectile weapons.
—waiting for the holographic images to come at him, simulated attackers—
Servants. He had done this all before. He turned, crouched, looked at the massed cultists, the scattered Wakers. But these Servants were alert, alive, aware of what Nathans was doing. And this was not the simulation chamber.
“Kill them!” Nathans stretched out his hand, pointing with the arthame, pointing at Julia.
—“You’re not here because of any special talent, because you’re the best… You’re not important to him. You’ve been duped. “—
“Jones!”
—“And who do you think runs the Guild, Mr. Jones?”—
Out in the crowd, Julia stood unlike the other Wakers. She did not seem to recognize him; she didn’t seem aware of anything.
As Jones hesitated, Nathans let out a strange cry and snatched the scatter-stun from the folds of his own robe, brandishing it. “Damn you! Do I have to do this myself?”
—“He finds a new way to use you instead.”—
Jones turned calmly,
—You’ve been duped—
and pointed the projectile weapon directly at Nathans.
He took no time to acknowledge the man’s suddenly startled expression before he fired one round into the High Priest’s chest.
Nathans fell forward, still gripping the scatter-stun like a lifeline, and collapsed across the chained Servant on the altar, sliding slowly to the stage floor. His blood spilled into the center of the pentacle….
Danal watched Nathans die with an overwhelming hollowness inside, as if his own synBlood were pouring out onto the stage instead. All the plans, all the anger—all the pride, all the fascinating discussions—the betrayal, the revenge—how could he possibly feel ambivalent after that?
The two horrified Acolyte Supervisors fought through their paralysis and tried to rush toward Nathans’s fallen body, but the armored Elite Guard snapped up his projectile weapon, pointing it at them. The two assistants scattered and ran. Many of the cultists let out an enraged outcry, rising to their feet. The Elite Guard seemed terrified by the threat of a mob and fired two projectiles at the ceiling. Chunks of papier mache rained down, and the neo-Satanists quieted instantly, stunned and confused.
The Elite Guard pulled off his helmet, breathing deeply of the thick air. He blinked, looking shocked but defiant by what he had done. He dropped the hard black mask with a hollow clatter inside the pentacle next to Nathans’s blood.
The lights in the Sabbat grotto flickered and went dim. A low, almost subliminal tone rumbled through the enclosed chamber, nearly beyond the range of human hearing. But Danal could feel it grinding in his bones; it made an unwanted shudder crawl up his spine.
Jones moved over to the Servant and fumbled with the chains, trying to find some way to free his wrists. He found a hidden catch, and one of the manacles snapped open. Danal sat up and looked into the face of the Elite Guard, the real face, but the emotions he saw were buried several layers deep; Jones was not willing to let them surface just yet. The black man kept flicking his eyes out to the crowd, where Julia stood unmoving.
Gregor started to shout something, but his words were engulfed by a ripping crash of sound that echoed through the chains of microspeakers embedded in the grotto walls—speakers that only recently had been used to augment the chanting of the neo-Satanists.
At the same instant a flash of laser light dazzled across hidden mirrors on the stalactites in a lightning web. A dull orange glow seeped in around the edges of the chamber, strongest on the blank wall of textured rock to the left of the altar. A foul-smelling smoke curled up from cracks in the rock. Sulfur. Brimstone.
Collectively the neo-Satanists let out an awed gasp.
Immensely powerful words clawed at the air, like the sound of the universe tearing at its seams.
“YOU HAVE SUMMONED. AND I HAVE RETURNED.”
Bright orange light stabbed through cracks in the rock wall as the stone began to shift and crumble, exposing a black cavern that seemed to extend to the gullet of the earth. Danal’s eyes stung as sulfur fumes belched forth… and behind the smoke, in ghastly shadows, he saw something move, coming forward, taking shape.
The Servant’s skin crawled, and the audience let out mixed cries of absolute terror and utter delight. They had forgotten everything else now, the Servants, the death of the High Priest—this was the main event.
A hulking demon, mammoth in size, with curved horns and cloven hooves—true to every nightmare and legend of neo-Satanism—emerged from below. Probing, it set one titan hoof forward with a thump! on the stage, and then it strode forward into full view, lashing its arrow-tipped tail and shattering the rock wall. A violent purple glare burned behind the demon’s eyes as it surveyed the gathered worshipers. Deadly fangs filled its mouth as it snarled.
Amazingly, Jones seemed startled but unimpressed, and he muttered something that Danal couldn’t hear over the frenzied confusion of the crowd. But the Servant wasn’t listening anyway—his entire conception of reality rocked back and forth. Impossible! Nathans lay sacrificed within the pentacle. Had Stromgaard been right all along? Danal couldn’t accept that, but the demon stood in plain view, real and tangible, not a hologram.
“You have summoned me! You brought me back. And I am grateful!” The monster ignored the Servant on the altar as Danal freed his other arm and frantically tried to loosen his ankles, fighting his horror. The demon spread his arms and bellowed to the neo-Satanists.
“Your faith has resurrected me. And I will grant your greatest wish! All of you!” The creature drew in a roaring breath. “For all those who truly believe, return with me now—to the wonderful depths of Hell!”
The monster gestured to the fountains mounted along the walls. The bubbling foamy water spewed forth a brilliant scarlet, fluorescent, brighter even than arterial blood.