John set down his lantern and crept along the passage. He had no idea if it was even possible to sneak up on the power that had beguiled the others, but since Amadour was inadvertently providing cover, he might as well try.
The scent of frankincense tinged the air and, with each step John took, a bit more of the chamber at the end of the tunnel came into view. The source of the amber glow was Colm’s lantern, set aside like his own. The light gleamed on a ten-foot-tall version of the statues in the alcoves with an altar positioned in front of it. No flautist or percussionist was in evidence. Maybe ghosts were playing the music.
But by the time John slipped up to the doorway, all three of his friends, all completely naked now, were visible. Colm stood before the altar with a curved dagger in one hand. John gasped when he spied what the entranced man held in the other.
He shouted, “Stop!” Bulled his way past Amadour, sprinted toward Colm, but failed to reach him in time. Smiling, the pale man turned away from the altar and proffered his severed testicles for his companions to see. Blood fell between his legs and spattered on the floor.
John bellowed, “Wake up!” His men looked back at him with no sign of comprehension.
Then the music swelled, and Cybele’s power erupted inside his head, once more offering the bestial joy that was her gift. Spurning the enticement, he remembered how Elizabeth had bestowed affectionate little touches during the course of conversation with virtually everyone — it had made him jealous until he realized it was just her way — the raucous laugh her mother had deplored as unladylike, how she’d fussily brushed his hair into place with her fingertips when it needed combing, and drank deep of the anguish attendant upon her loss. The intoxication of the Great Mother’s touch receded like a wave that had crashed against rock but failed to break it.
He looked up at the statue, “This is where your worshippers came to be initiated.” He knew that as he’d known the goddess’s name. “But we didn’t mean to come here, and we don’t want to sacrifice to you. Please, forgive us for trespassing and let us go.”
For a moment, nothing more happened. Then, clutching his mutilated crotch, Colm tottered away from the altar, and Amadour and Pascal started forward to take his place. The now-bloody dagger waited atop the stone.
John scrambled in front of Pascal, slapped him, and then backhanded him. “Think about Jesus!” he screamed in the small man’s face. “Think about the Virgin! They don’t want us to geld ourselves to glorify a pagan devil!”
The little tinker blinked. He looked like he was waking up, but John couldn’t linger to find out. He lunged after Amadour and grabbed him by the forearm a pace shy of the altar.
“You don’t want to hurt yourself, either,” John said. “Step away—“
Amadour whirled, wrenching himself free of his friend’s grip in the process. A moment ago, he, like Colm and Pascal, had moved with a dreamlike stateliness, but now he punched at John’s face with the speed of a seasoned brawler.
The punch smashed into John’s nose and rocked him backward. Amadour sprang at him, hooked a leg behind his, dumped him on the floor, and dropped on top of him. The big man seized hold of his friend’s neck and squeezed.
John pulled on Amadour’s forearms and beat and at his face. Neither tactic loosened the Norman’s grip. John’s throat hurt, and pressure mushroomed inside his head.
Then something clanged, and Amadour’s fingers slackened. Grasping the shovel he’d formerly set aside, Pascal hit his fellow Norman over the head a second time. Amadour pitched forward.
John rolled the unconscious man off him. “Thank you,” he wheezed.
Pascal scowled as if to indicate this was no time for chatter. “We have to get out of here before anything else happens!”
His fear of further peril seemed eminently reasonable. At the moment, John didn’t feel Cybele’s power attacking his mind anew, but the flute-and-cymbal music persisted.
“Get dressed,” he said. “We’ll carry Amadour and Colm.” Or drag them if that was the best they could manage.
Pascal hesitated. “Is there a point to taking Colm?”
John turned. At some point, his fellow Englishman’s legs had given out entirely. Head drooping, he now sat on the floor in a considerable pool of blood.
Once upon a time, other worshippers must have tended the newly made eunuchs, priests or physicians who knew how to stanch the bleeding. In the absence of such treatment, could Colm survive? Assuming his sanity returned, would he even want to?
John pushed such thoughts away. “We have to try.” He moved toward Colm, and the music changed, from slow solemnity to something jabbing and discordant.
It sounded angry, furious, and that was likely as Cybele intended. It was one thing, barely tolerable, perhaps, for John himself to refuse her blessing. When he presumed to rob her of other worshippers, especially one already initiate, his manhood sacrificed by his own hand, he committed an unforgivable affront.
Colm snapped his head up. Formerly blue, his glaring eyes were now as golden as the lantern light.
He roared, and his teeth grew points. His face projected into a snout and jaws, and his head broadened. Actually, John realized, the mutilated man’s entire lanky frame was putting on mass, but the head was enlarging even in relation to the shoulders that supported it.
“Jesus, help us!” Pascal crossed himself.
Colm’s hair rippled longer, surrounding his head in a shaggy ruff. Tawny fur sprouted across his body. Manifestly no longer weakened by his castration or other self-inflicted wounds, he sprang up on feet that now resembled paws. A long tail with a tuft of hair on the end lashed behind him.
John retreated and jerked his sword from his scabbard. Pascal hesitated, perhaps considering whether to take the time to retrieve his own blade or simply summoning up his courage. Then he screamed and rushed the lion man with his shovel extended like a spear.
The thing that once was Colm sidestepped and grabbed the spade just behind the head. He swung it, and Pascal lost his grip on it, reeled and fell. The lion man gathered himself to spring.
Bellowing to distract Colm, John charged and cut. The creature retreated just far enough for the sword to flash by an inch short of target, then whipped a stubby-fingered hand equipped with hooked claws at his attacker’s extended arm. John jerked the limb back just in time to keep it from being shredded.
At once, the lion man advanced and clawed with the other hand. John sprang back and slashed. The stop-cut sliced fingers loose and sent them tumbling.
That maiming stroke would have balked many a normal man. Colm, however, didn’t pause for an instant. He kept coming so fast and relentlessly that, even though John gave ground, it was difficult to shift the sword into position for another cut.
Instead of retreating straight backward, John shifted to one side, then the other. Colm compensated quickly, but the second maneuver finally opened up the distance for a proper forceful cut.
John struck at the lion man’s head. Colm’s hand shot out and caught the blade just shy of the target. He ripped the sword from John’s grip and flung it clattering away.
Now, surely, he had two wounded hands, but the new injury didn’t balk him, either. Rather, he lunged.
John retreated, and his lower body banged against something hard. He fell across the altar. Flinging blood, furry hands hammered down on his shoulders to anchor him in place. Colm opened his jaws wide and bent down. With his prey disarmed and pinned, he moved slower than before. Maybe he or, more likely, the Magna Mater, wished to savor the moment.
John turned his head. The sacrificial dagger still lay beside him on the block of stone. He grabbed it and stabbed the lion man in the chest.