Crown of Shadows (23 page)

With a sinking heart he staggered toward the bedroom, and somehow gathered enough strength to call the Hunter’s name. He no longer questioned what had happened here; the fae itself made it clear what type of creature had visited, and there was only one thing a creature like that would want. “Gerald?” He searched the bedroom quickly, desperately, but he knew even as he did so that the Hunter wasn’t here. Cold fae stabbed into his flesh like knives as he searched the living room and the small kitchen; he felt as if his limbs were rotting away beneath him, infected by every wound.
It’s illusion,
he thought desperately.
It has to be. Ignore it.
As he verified that the last room was empty, and gazed upon the basement window he had boarded up himself, he felt a black despair rise up inside him. It was still sealed from the inside, just as he had left it. Just like the other two had been. That and the bolted door guaranteed that the Hunter had been caught inside, and had been taken ... where? What kind of creature had the power to kidnap him out of this place against his will, despite such solid barriers?

With effort he managed to stagger out of the apartment, past where the malignant force now lapped hungrily at the doorsill, to the tiled floor beyond where cool, clean air flowed. He fell to his knees there, and the vomit surged up in him, his stomach spasming as if somehow such activity might exorcise the terrible unclean presence from his flesh. For a few gut-wrenching minutes he was not aware of the landlady standing beside him, or of any other normal feature of the building. Then her voice brought him back to reality.

“It’ll take more than a few coins to clean up this mess,” she said acidly.

Shuddering, he looked up at her; his eyes would hardly focus. “Shut the door,” he gasped. When she didn’t move, he squeezed his eyes shut in the hopes that forcing tears would clear them. “Shut the door!”

She took one step toward the small apartment, and then he heard her gasp. Even without a Knowing she could sense what was in there, and despite the urgency in his voice she clearly wasn’t willing to risk contact with it. At last, half-blinded by the tears he had forced, he lunged forward toward the door. Malevolence stabbed into him as he braced himself with one hand on the floor, grabbing at the door with the other. He narrowly missing smashing his fingers in the door frame as he slammed it shut. For a moment he feared that the presence inside the room would flow under and around that simple barrier, but whatever wards Tarrant had put on the apartment were clearly enough to keep it enclosed now that the door was shut. Thank God for that.

Shuddering, he struggled to his feet. There was fluid on his shirt, and a hot bitterness in his throat. Numbly he wiped a shirtsleeve across his mouth, drying it. His whole body was shaking, and for a moment he could barely catch his breath, much less speak.

At last he looked up at the landlady. If she was afraid of the presence she had sensed in the room, that emotion was swamped by a far greater one: rage.

“I want you out of here,” she growled. “You and your friend both, right away. I’ll keep your deposit to pay for damages, and for cleaning. You get out of here tonight, and don’t come back! I don’t ever want to see you here again, not you or that—”

“You’ll have to break open the windows,” he interrupted. “From the outside. Let the sunlight in. That’ll do most of the work, and then you can bring in mirrors—”

“I know how to do an exposing,” she snapped. “Damn you to hells for making it necessary!” She looked down at the pool of vomit, then at him, in disgust. “Now get your things and get out of here. And gods help you if you ever cross this threshold again.”

Legs shaking, he forced himself up the stairs.
Got to find Tarrant,
he thought.
Got to.
But even if he did, then what? Could he help him? Did he have the kind of power it took to stand up to a demon who left such malignance as its calling card?

Have to try,
he thought grimly. Not questioning his own motives, for once. Not asking himself whether it wouldn’t be better to let the Hunter stew in Hell at last while the world went on in innocence, a better place for his absence. Because Damien needed him. The Church needed him. And therefore—though most didn’t know it, and would probably deny it if asked—the very world that he had haunted so ruthlessly needed him.

We’re fighting for man’s survival,
he thought. Remembering Calesta’s work in the east, and its loathsome harvest.
We’re fighting for humankind’s soul.

Pulling on a clean shirt as hurriedly as he could, sweeping up what little cash he had left and forcing it into his pockets, he hurried out into the night in search of his dark companion.

It was a warm night, a sticky night, and half the walls in the Temple of Pleasure had been rolled up in hopes of admitting a cooling breeze. On the broad steps which surrounded the temple some singles and couples sprawled languidly, and it was impossible to tell if the sweat which glistened on their skin resulted from their “worship”—which ranged from half-naked petting to the delights contained in wine bottles and water pipes—or from the night itself.

There was a circle delineated by the temple light, and Damien stood just beyond it. He could feel its presence before him almost as a physical barrier, and for a moment he lacked the courage to cross it. If the Patriarch knew of his search, if somehow he knew that a priest had come
here ...
well, his reaction wouldn’t be a pretty one, that was sure. And it damned well might prove the last straw between them, one transgression too many for the Holy Father to tolerate.

He was trying not to think about that. He was trying not to think about what he would do with himself if the Patriarch really did cast him out of the Church. Such considerations belonged to the future, and right now the future itself was in jeopardy. Would he want to remain a priest if he knew that the cost was the sacrifice of everything he believed in? Could he value the robes he wore and the ritual sword he carried if he knew that the price of maintaining them was the submission of this world to Calesta’s hunger? And yet ... stepping into that circle of light was a commitment such as he had never made before, to a mode of operation he had hitherto rejected. Only sorcerers bargained with demons. Only the damned. Never the Church, whose very existence was dedicated to making such bargains impossible. Never, never one of the Church’s priests.

Trembling, he shut his eyes.
So the Patriarch does find out, he told himself. So what? Which do you value more, this avocation you’ve grown so accustomed to, or the chance to do something to help save your world? Is one man’s comfort such a great sacrifice for God to require, in order that His people might be defended?

But despite all his internal arguments he felt sick as he stepped into the light, and as he approached the temple he could feel his heart pounding in his chest with such power that it seemed to make his whole body shake.

He hadn’t been inside a pagan temple since his childhood, since the day when his mother had taken him to Yoshti’s house of worship in the hope that it would appeal to him. Even then he had found it uncomfortable, though it would be many years before he could articulate the reasons. Now all that discomfort was back again, and more. He looked at the intertwined couples, at the sweaty groups who sprawled on rugs and couches and wherever the inclination struck them, and thought,
This is not worship.
He watched an old man blissfully accepting a wad of gummy substance from a priest and stuffing it into his water pipe, and he thought,
There is no god in this place.
He walked stiffly through what seemed like chaos, dozens of men and women who had nothing in common but a hunger for immediate gratification, and he reminded himself,
This is a lezu they worship. They feed him with their lusts, and he gives them illusions of ecstasy. A simple contract, easily comprehended, readily fulfilled. It’s really a wonder that men follow the One God at all, with such relationships available.

There were priests in the temple, male and female both, but they wore no special costume to identify themselves, merely a silver neckpiece with Karril’s blatantly phallic symbol engraved upon it. He began to approach one, but suddenly hesitated. What was he supposed to say?
Excuse me, I really need to talk to your god in private, could you arrange an interview?
How did you make contact with a godling, other than through prayer? He flushed as he considered what manner of worship Karril might require, and for the first time since coming gave serious consideration to turning back. He even glanced back the way he had come, as if to assure himself that his way out was unimpeded—

—and the worshipers were gone. All of them. The walls had been replaced by tapestried hangings, and a cool breeze flowed between them. Even the priests were gone, and the buffet table that had been set up by the back wall banished as if by sorcery. Only the central fountain remained, and the wine that poured from its ornate spigots was no longer red but crystal gold, and smelled like champagne.

“Well, well.” The voice came from behind him. “Look who’s come to be a guest at our festivities.”

He turned around to face the source of the voice, a woman of thirty or so clad in a few meager bits of silk. A lot of woman, and all in the right places. Shaggy blonde hair half-obscured the priest’s necklace she wore, but—like her clothing—obscured little else. He found his eyes wandering of their own accord to vistas that were better left unstudied, and at last managed to focus on an ornate piece of jewelry hanging precariously from her shoulder. “I need to find Karril,” he muttered. Bright jewelry glittered on a bed of tanned flesh at her waist, on her breast, down her arm. “I need to talk to him.” Did he sound as awkward as he felt? Her perfume came to him on the breeze and he felt an involuntary stiffening in his groin; given the gravity of his mission here, the response was doubly embarrassing. What kind of power did this woman have, that so easily overbore his self-control, his fears for Tarrant, his revulsion for the very temple that surrounded them?

And then it all came together. The jewelry. The illusion. His response to this woman ... and the woman herself. He forced himself to look upward, to meet her eyes. It was no easy task, given the alternatives.

“Karril?”

With a soft chuckle the woman bowed; it was a precarious angle for certain parts of her clothing. “At your service, Reverend. Whatever that service might be.”

“I didn’t ... that is ... I thought you were male.”

“Neither male nor female, as humans know gender. And either one, as the need of the moment dictates.” Her eyes sparkled flirtatiously. “Given the Hunter’s attitude toward women, I usually avoid the feminine in his presence. Too distracting. As for you ...” She glanced down at Damien’s crotch, imperfectly curtained by the hem of his shirt, and smiled. “Perhaps as a good host I should make things more comfortable....”

He never saw the change happen, though he watched it from start to finish. There was no surging of the earth-fae, as with Tarrant, and no melding of flesh from one form to another. One instant the woman was standing before him, and the next instant a man stood in her place. That simple. He was shorter than Damien, stouter, and slightly older. The tasteless brooches fastening his full velvet robe at the waist were the same ones the woman had worn, and jeweled rings flashed on his fingers as he gestured broadly to a couch some few yards away. “Will you be seated, Reverend? I can offer you refreshment, at least.”

He breathed in deeply and exhaled, trying to clear his head of the cloying perfume the woman had worn. “What about the others?”

“Who?” He saw Damien look around the temple—now empty—and he chuckled. “What, my faithful? They’re still there. Surrounded by curtains of illusion so fine that each one imagines himself truly alone, in an environment that caters to ...” He grinned. “Shall we say, to individual taste? I try to be an obliging god.”

“I
saw them all.”

“You
wanted
to see them all, my dear Reverend. You needed to despise them—and me—in order to set yourself at ease here.” He shrugged. “As I say, I try to be a good host.”

He walked to the fountain and dipped a hand beneath its surface; when he withdrew, there was a chalice of finely engraved silver in his hand. “I would love to think you came here for a simple diversion, but, alas, I’m not so naive. Though the illusion is tempting.” He sipped from the chalice as if assessing its contents, and nodded his approval. “So what brings a Knight of the Church to this den of unholy indulgence? Surely not an attempt at proselytizing.” Again he chuckled. “My worshipers are too loyal for that game.”

He forced the words out somehow, past the knot in his throat. “Gerald Tarrant’s gone.”

The demon’s expression darkened. Damien thought he saw him stiffen.

“So?” His voice was low now, and quiet, and all humor was gone from his tone. “What does that have to do with me?”