“Kerry!” he yelled.
She came in from his private apartment, butt naked. He hadn’t allowed her to wear clothes since the day her brother brought her in. Best-looking girl the coven had acquired in ages. A few tweaks with cosmetic adaptation packages, pandering to his personal tastes, and she was visual perfection.
“Get my fifth invocation robes,” he told her. “Hurry up. I’ve got the initiation in ten minutes.”
She bobbed her head apprehensively, and retreated back into the apartment. Garth started picking up the junk Wener had left, reading the flek labels, datavising the blocks for a menu. A gentle gust of cool air wafted across his face. The candles flickered. It broke his concentration for a moment. Air conditioner screwed up again.
There was nothing of any interest among Wener’s haul, no blackmail levers; some of the fleks were company files, but a quick check found no commercially sensitive items. He was indifferent about that. Data was the other offering the coven made to the High Magus, and that on a weekly basis. A gift that never brought any return, other than the invisible umbrella of political protection the sect extended to its senior members. So Garth played along, considering it his insurance premium. The reports were more than a simple summary of what was happening inside the coven; the High Magus insisted on knowing what action was going down on the street, every street.
Years of being out on the street at the hard edge had taught Garth the value of good intelligence, but this was like a fetish with the High Magus.
Kerry returned with his robes. The fifth invocation set were appropriately flamboyant, black and purple, embroidered with scarlet pentagrams and nonsense runes. But they were a symbol of authority, and the sect was very strict about internal discipline. Kerry helped him into them, then hung a gold chain with an inverted cross round his neck. When he looked into a mirror he was satisfied with what he saw. The body might be sagging slightly these days, but he used weapon implants rather than straight physical violence to assert himself now; while the shaven skull and eyes recessed by cosmetic adaptation packages gave him a suitably ominous appearance.
The temple was at the centre of the headquarters, a cavity three stories high. Straight rows of severed steel reinforcement struts poking out of the walls showed where the floors and ceilings used to be. A broad pentagon containing an inverted cross was painted across the rear wall. It was illuminated from below by a triple row of skull candles, great gobs of wax in upturned craniums. Stars, demons, and runes formed a constellation around it, although they were fading under layers of soot. The altar was a long carbon-concrete slab, ripped from the sidewalk outside, and mounted on jagged pillars of carbotanium. Impressively solid, if nothing else. There was a black brazier on top of it, lithe blue flames slithering out of the trash bricks it was filled with, sending up a plume of sweet-stinking smoke. A pair of tall serpent-shaped candle sticks flanked it. Ten iron hoops, sunk into the carbon concrete, trailed lengths of chain which ended in manacles.
Just over half of the coven’s acolytes were waiting obediently when Garth arrived. Standing in rows, wearing their grey robes, with coloured belts denoting seniority. Garth would have preferred more. But they were stretched pretty thin right now. A turf dispute with a gang operating out of ninety-ten street had resulted in several clashes. The gang lord was doubtless thinking it would all be settled with a boundary agreement. Garth was going to cure him of that illusion. God’s Brother did not negotiate. Acolytes had the gang under observation, building up a picture of their entire operation. It wasn’t something the gang understood or could ever emulate, they didn’t have the discipline or the drive. Their only motivation was to claw in enough money to pay for their own stim fixes.
That was what made the sect different; serving God’s Brother so rewarding.
In another week Garth would unlock the weapons stash and launch a raid. The High Magus had already arranged for him to take delivery of sequestration nanonics; that would be the fate of the gang’s leadership, turned into biological mechanoids. Any attractive youths would be used as bluesense meat after the acolytes had enjoyed their victory orgy. And, inevitably, there would be a sacrifice.
The acolytes bowed to Garth, who went to stand in front of the altar. Five initiates were shackled to it. Three boys and two girls, lured in by the promises and the treachery of friends. One of the boys stood defiantly straight, determined to show he could take whatever the initiation threw at him so he could claim his place, the other two were just surly and subdued. Garth had ordered one of the girls to be tranked after he’d spoken to her earlier. She’d virtually been abducted by an acolyte angry at losing her to an outside rival, and was likely to go into a mental melt-down if she wasn’t eased in to her new life; she had strong ambitions to better herself and rise out of Downtown.
Garth held up his arms, and made the sign of the inverted cross. “With flesh we bond in the night,” he intoned.
The acolytes started a low, mournful chanting, swaying softly in unison.
“Pain we love,” Garth told them. “Pain frees the serpent beast. Pain shows us what we are. Your servants, Lord.”
He was almost in a trance state as he spoke the words, he’d said them so many times before. So many initiations. The coven had a high turnover, arrests, stim burnouts, fights. But never drop outs.
Indoctrination and discipline helped, but his main weapon of control was belief. Belief in your own vileness, and knowing there was no shame in it. Wanting things to get worse, to destroy and hurt and ruin. The easy way forward . . . once you give in to your true self, your serpent beast. All that started right here, with the ceremony.
It was a deliberate release of sex and violence, an empowerment of the most base instincts, permitting little resistance. So easy to join, so natural to immerse yourself in the frenzy around you. Indulge the need to belong, to be the same as your brethren family. An act which gave the existing acolytes that fraternity.
As to the initiates, they passed through the eye of the needle. Fear kept them in place at first, fear of knowing how exquisitely ugly the sect really was, how they would be dealt with if they disobeyed or attempted to leave. Then the cycle would turn, and there would be another initiation. Only this time it would be them showing their devotion to God’s Brother, revelling in the unchaining of their serpent beast. Doing as they had been done by, and enraptured by the accomplishment.
Whoever had designed the ritual, Garth thought, had really understood basic conditioning psychology. Such elemental barbarism was the only possible way to exert any kind of control over a Downtown savage. And there was no other sort of resident here.
“In darkness we see You, Lord,” Garth recited. “In darkness we live. In darkness we wait for the true Night that You will bring us. Into that Night we will follow You.” He lowered his arms.
“We will follow You,” the acolytes echoed. Their rustling voices had become hot with expectation.
“When You light the true path of salvation at the end of the world, we will follow You.”
“We will follow You.”
“When Your legions fall upon the angels of the false lord, we will follow You.”
“We will follow You.”
“When the time . . .”
“That time is now,” a single clear voice announced.
The acolytes grunted in surprise, while Garth spluttered to a halt, more astonished than outraged at the interruption. They all knew how important he considered the sect’s ceremonies, how intolerant of sacrilege. Only true believers can inspire belief in others.
“Who said that?” he demanded.
A figure walked forward from the back of the temple, clad in a midnight-black robe. The opening at the front of the hood seemed to absorb all light, there was no hint of the head it contained. “I am your new messiah, and I have come among you to bring our Lord’s Night to this planet.”