Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Shadowgate 04 (16 page)

 
          
Toller
darted forward and grabbed her, kicking the walkie-talkie away, and yanked hard
on the front of her jumper. The zipper up the back split, and her blouse tore
open. Buttons flew everywhere, and Claire made a sound of outrage.

 
          
"Come
on," Toller called to the others. "What's she doing down here if she
didn't want to play? She deserves what she gets
—
don't you, Claire?"

 
          
There
was a hesitant mutter of agreement from the men behind him.

 
          
"Damn
you, Toller Hasloch," Claire said with sincere intensity. Toller
laughed and flung her to the ones waiting behind him. She was caught by the man
who had opened the door upstairs, the one with the blazing blue eyes. He yanked
the jumper down off her shoulders, and Claire felt the predatory intensity in
the room jump.

 
          
She
struggled, but there were too many of them
—
most of them more than a
little drunk and all of them imbued with the ugly psychology of the mob. In
moments she was stripped to her panties, bra, and garter belt, her nylons
laddered by the struggle.

 
          
Toller
tied her hands behind her back, and threw Claire up onto the altar.

           
She landed with a solid force, and
while she lay there stunned, he grabbed her ankles and began to tie them as
well. Despair seemed to seep out of the walls around her; it filled her like a
cup, as sharp and sudden as physical pain
—
why waste energy in
struggling when no success could come of it in the end? Claire lay limp, unable
to control her shuddering as he tied her ankles together tightly. She was
lying on her bound hands
—
her shoulders pulled awkwardly backward by the binding
—
and her body ached with
cold, as though she were lying inside a walk-in freezer.

 
          
"We're
going to try a little experiment, my friends and I," Toller said to her
when he had finished. "We'll all concentrate on you
—
all twelve of us
—
and see if we can drive
your soul out of your body. If we can, I'm afraid that the world will just
think you've had another one of your spells, and this one
—
too bad!
—
will have been permanent. Of
course, if we can't . . . well, the human mind isn't designed to stand up to
that sort of pressure, is it?"

 
          
"You're
a fraud," Claire flung at him through gritted teeth.

 
          
"I'm
sure you wish that were true," Toller told her kindly. "But it isn't,
and if you really thought it was, you'd never have come here. My apologies for
the other night, by the way
—
I meant to have some fun and liven up my party, nothing
more. It wasn't meant for you."

 
          
But
you'd have taken advantage of it, wouldn't you, if Jonathan hadn't been there?
She
tried to remember that Professor MacLaren knew she was here, that there was at
least some hope of rescue, but it was as if she were attempting to lift a
weight beyond her strength. She could not manage to believe.

 
          
"Let
me go," Claire said again. Tears welled up in her eyes, born of fury or
fear or both.

 
          
"Don't
be silly," Toller replied chidingly.

 
          
With
a minimum of fuss, he and the others lit the candles scattered around the room,
and then the dishes of incense that were placed on the shelf beneath the
twisted cross. Silky blue smoke with a choking bitter odor began to stream up
toward the ceiling, making the maimed face of the white figure seem almost
alive. Claire closed her eyes and turned away, trying not to let herself know
how scared she was.

 
          
Then
Toller and his acolytes gathered around the altar and the silence became even
more profound. Claire wanted to make some kind of smart remark, but a strange
and powerful reluctance held her silent. They weren't just quiet
—
they were doing something,
something she could feel the way she could feel the force of an incoming storm;
as a pressure in her chest, in her head.

 
          
In
her head.

 
          
It
was like a painless headache, like a sensation for which there were no sensory
referents. She did not like it, but she could not say that it was painful, or
even unpleasant. But the thing that it represented terrified her
—
as much for the possibility
that it would go on, as for the moment it shattered and became something
uglier
—
and
there did not seem to be anything she could do to resist it.

 
          
There
is always something.

           
A calm certainty washed over her
with gentle suddenness. It was the only thing she could feel beside the
pressure.
Oh, dear God, help me,
Claire prayed awkwardly.

 
          
There
was no discernible answer, but the crushing sense of fear lifted enough for an
irreverent thought sparked by the music she'd heard earlier to surface.
Talk
about a movement full of tools and cranks . . . I wonder if Toller knows that
he looks terrific in a dress?

 
          
The
flare of speechless displeasure that greeted that thought made her groan. She
could not see, and if it was simply because her eyes were closed then she could
not find the strength to open them.

 
          
No,
no, no . . .
Claire chanted inside her mind, unable to form a coherent
prayer and knowing, too, that the intent was enough. She was cold and
half-naked and in desperate danger, but the knowledge that she was not alone
was like an invisible shield. God saw, if no one else did. And even though
Toller might kill her
—

 
          
Just
because you're stronger doesn't mean you're right, Hasloch.

 
          
She
clung to that thought, as the roaring increased in her ears, and her hands and
feet seemed chill and very far away.

 
          
Then,
salvation.

 
          
"Toller
Christian Hasloch, I charge you in the name of the Most High and Holy Name to
abandon your errors of Darkness!"

 
          
Professor
MacLaren's voice boomed out with the reassuring anger of the cop on the beat.
The crushing pressure stopped, and Claire felt relief wash over her with a
healing, numbing caress. He
had
come!

 
          
Once
Claire had left, Colin waited in the car with the terrible patience that he'd
learned on a hundred other cold and rainy nights thousands of miles away. At
least tonight he didn't have to worry about whether his forged papers would
pass a police check, and wonder whether he'd be greeting the dawn in a Gestapo
cell. All he had to worry about was Claire.

 
          
She
should be inside Hasloch's house by now, and when she found what they were
looking for, all she had to do was call him on the other half of the radio set
he'd given her. With a Sensitive acting for the Light already inside the
bounds, none of Hasloch's magickal wards should be able to stand against an
outside assault, and Colin would be able to tie whatever hoodoo the boy was
using into a blue-ribbon knot.

 
          
He
was fairly sure no one would prevent him from entering the house
—
he was a teacher at the
college most of them attended; if worse came to worst, he'd just pull rank.

 
          
But
where was Claire? He began to worry as the minutes stretched to an hour, then
two. Why didn't she call?

 
          
It
didn't occur to Colin that Claire might not fulfill her side of the bargain.
Wary and tormented though she might be, Claire London had a natural will nearly
as strong as that of a trained magician. When Claire said she'd do something,
Colin knew she would not take back her given word lightly.

 
          
But
there were so many pitfalls in her way
—
dangers that she might not yet
take seriously enough to guard herself from them. The child barely believed in
her own psychic sensitivity
—
to ask her to take so much more on trust so quickly . . .

 
          
Needs
must, when the devil drives,
Colin quoted ironically to himself. He could
not work tonight's Operation without the aid of a Sensitive to get him past the
outer shields, and he could not put aside that work simply because it
endangered innocents. Many more would be endangered if it were allowed to
continue.

 
          
The
black phoenix of Nazism loose in the world once more . . . and this time, a
world with nuclear capability. What would the worshipers of the Eternal Night
do with the power of a newborn sun in their hands?

 
          
The
magnitude of the threat promised absolution for any extreme action, but Colin
knew that this too was a trap to maim the spirit. The end never justified the
means. The means
shaped
the end, and so the Light was forever barred
from using the tools of the Dark to wage its war. Those who fought for the
Light must always know the danger, must always freely consent to risk
themselves in a battle that could never be anything but unequal.

 
          
But
how can any neophyte know the true nature of the peril before they face it? How
do I keep my own hands clean when I've chosen to sacrifice innocent men and
women to the goals I have chosen?

 
          
There
was only one hard unforgiving answer to that: Colin's hands were not clean, and
never would be. For so long as he fought for the Light, he must do penance for
his fight. Yet those who fought were needed as urgently as those whose karma it
was to stand aside.

 
          
The
crackle of static on the transmitter/receiver was a welcome interruption from
his own stark thoughts. Claire's voice erupted from it, sexless and distorted.

 
          
"Professor,
I'm down in the basement. The door to it is in a room just off the kitchen.
It's just what you said, and it's horrible
—
"

 
          
Abruptly
the little device went dead, but Colin did not waste time trying to raise
Claire again. He was out of the car and running toward the house through the
rain, one hand clutched over the small revolver in his trenchcoat pocket. A
terrible fear possessed him, that he was risking more than he knew, that to
lose this fight
—
to lose Claire
—
would cost him all that he
was. Even as he realized the cost, he accepted it. He would not fail.

 
          
Once
he was inside the house it cost him precious minutes to find the door to the
basement, but, like Claire, he had no trouble in unriddling the secret of the
false shelving that concealed the secret underground room. He could smell the
incense, chokingly thick.

 
          
When
he pulled back the false shelving, the curtain swirled around him, and Colin
could feel the faint cheated snarl of the wards he had defeated ringing
discordantly in his ears. His revolver was in his hand before he took his
bearings, blinking in the candlelit dimness, and the shock he felt at what he
saw was so great that for an instant he nearly fired at the nearest of the
black-robed, rune-blazoned worshipers.

           
It was as if he'd stepped into a
past he never wanted to visit again.

 
          
There
was the Rune-Christ hanging from the World Tree, his body covered with the
symbols of ancient magic; a malign conflation of Odin and Lucifer. There were
the
fylfot
banners, the
hakenkreutz
candlesticks and the sunwheel
censers: the familiar trappings of the
Black
Temple
before him were like a blow
to the heart, symbols of the worship of a Lucifer who had never bowed to the
will of Heaven, of a Grail that had never known the touch of the Christ.