“You deserved it.”
“Fuck you. I was nineteen. I had my life, and you took it away, you and that psycho fruit Banneth. I want to kill Banneth.
I swore I would.”
“No!” Quinn stormed. Erhard quailed, cowering back from the command. “Banneth does not die,” Quinn said. “Not ever. Banneth
belongs to me.”
The ghost edged forward, holding out a hand as though feeling the warmth thrown out by a fire. “What are you?”
Quinn giggled quietly. “I don’t know. But God’s Brother has shown me what I’ve got to do.” He walked out of the temple, leaving
the ghost behind.
Three figures were marching along the corridor, one of them with desperate reluctance. Quinn recognized him. Acolyte Kilian.
They’d met a few days ago. All three frowned as they passed their invisible watcher, puzzled by why they suddenly felt so
chilly.
Quinn followed them. He knew where they were going, he’d taken this route himself enough times. Soon he would see it again:
Banneth. That’s all it would be, this time. Just a look, a reminder of that face. Nothing fast would happen to Banneth. It
had taught Quinn well, in that respect. The most delectable punishments were the slowest ones. And when Night came, it would
be in tandem with eternity.
______
Darkness has arrived
. Even when the acolytes didn’t whisper it, the phrase hung in the smoky air of the sect’s Edmonton headquarters. A threat
more menacing than any sadism the sergeant acolytes could bestow.
Banneth knew what that meant. The AV projectors were broadcasting a constant coverage of the New York situation, which the
entire headquarters coven was obsessed by. The ar-cology’s continuing isolation. Rumours of free possessed. Portents wherever
you looked. And many of the coven looked very hard indeed.
Their work suffered as a consequence. Income from the scams and hustling were well down in every coven across town. Even she,
the High Magus, couldn’t rack up much enthusiasm. What chance did the lesser maguses have?
When she did rage at the sergeant acolytes, they just shuffled their feet and muttered dourly that there was little point
continuing their old activities. Our time has come, they said, God’s Brother is returning to Earth. Who cares about knocking
off dumb-ass civilians. Given the creed of the Light Bringer sect, it wasn’t an attitude she could effectively argue against.
The irony of the situation didn’t escape her.
All she could do was keep listening to the rap from the street, hunting out clues. It was a thin source of information, especially
now. Like a great many of Earth’s arcologies, Edmonton was slowly shutting down as it spewed out its own fear. Commercial
districts were reporting increasing absenteeism. People were calling in sick, taking holidays. Parks and arcades were nearly
deserted. Football, baseball, ice hockey, and other game fixtures were played to small crowds. Parents kept their kids away
from day clubs. For the first time in living memory it was always possible to get a seat on metro buses and tube carriages.
The vac-trains weren’t shut. Keeping the routes open was a bravado example of Govcentral confidence, intended to reassure
people that Earth was still safe. Passenger numbers were under thirty per cent. Nobody wanted to do anything that brought
them into contact with other people, especially strangers. Civic utility companies had to threaten employees with lawsuits
to keep essential services going. Government workers were intimidated with the prospect of disciplinary proceedings if they
didn’t perform their duties as normal, especially the police. The mayors were desperate to provide the image of normality
in the hope the public would follow their cue. A desperation that was taking on increasingly surreal dimensions in the face
of such stubborn public reticence.
Banneth kept dispatching sect members to wander through the eternal half light gullies that were downtown streets, hunting
any sign of a score. The usual broken inhabitants shuffling along the sidewalks would huddle away from them in sealed-up doorways,
sniffing suspiciously as they strutted past. Cop cars swished along silently, creating whirlpools of silvery wrapping foils;
the only vehicles moving at ground level. They slowed as they drew level with the sect gangs, examining the sullen faces through
misty armoured glass before tooting the siren and accelerating away. Forcing them to go out was a mostly futile exercise.
But she had persevered while the world slowly choked on its own paranoia. And now it seemed as though she’d got lucky.
Acolyte Kilian was doing his level best not to shake as the sergeant acolytes hurriedly left him alone in Banneth’s inner
sanctum. The chamber was buried at the centre of the skyscraper which the sect used as its headquarters. As with the Light
Bringer covens the world over, the original layout of rooms and corridors had been corroded and corrupted as acolytes burrowed
their way through walls and ducts like human maggots. Haphazard partitions were hammered and cemented up behind them, creating
a bizarre onion-layer topology of chambers and cells that protected the core. Banneth had dwelt there for nearly three and
a half decades without once ever venturing out. There was no need now, everything necessary to make her life enjoyable was
brought to her.
Unlike several High Maguses she was aware of, Banneth didn’t go in for ostentation. Her senior acolytes were permitted whatever
decadent luxuries they could steal and bribe for themselves. But they lived several floors above her, decorating their apartments
with expensive hedonistic amenities, and harems of beautiful youths and freakish supplicants. She indulged herself on somewhat
different levels.
When Kilian started to look round, he found he was in a place that was way beyond the worst-case scenarios that acolytes whispered
among themselves. Banneth’s sanctum was an experimental surgery. Its mainstay was a broad bench desk with high-capacity processor
blocks and shiny new medical equipment. Three stainless steel tables were lined up in the middle of the floor, with discreet
leather restraint straps placed strategically round the edges. Life support canisters were arranged around the walls, like
huge glass pillars. Aquarium-style lighting caps shone brightly on their contents. Kilian really wished they didn’t, the things
inside were enough to make him shit his pants. People, in a few of them. Suspended by a white silk web in some thick clear
fluid, tubes going into their mouths and noses (those that still had mouths and noses). Always with their eyes open, looking
about. Acolytes he remembered from not so long back; with new appendages grafted on; others with parts removed, their incisions
raw and open to reveal the missing organs. Then there were the less than human creatures, made worse by having very human
pieces attached. Clusters of organs bound together by a plexus of naked pumping veins. Animals, game cats and gorillas with
the tops of their skull removed, and no brain left inside. Pride of place on the wall above the work desk was taken by an
ancient oil painting of a young woman in a dress with a stiff bodice and long skirt.
Although Kilian had never been in the sanctum before, it was the place where everyone came eventually, either for boosting
or punishment. Banneth performed both types of operation herself. Now he stood as still as his trembling limbs would allow
as the High Magus walked briskly across the floor to him.
Banneth’s face had a male jawline, a blunt protuberant blade of bone. But that was the only masculine feature, the eyes and
mouth were soft, very feminine. A shaggy pelt of straw-blonde hair completed the enigma. Kilian glanced nervously at the white
shirt Banneth wore. Everyone said the High Magus got aroused at the sight of fear. If her nips were jutting, then she was
in the feminine stage of her cycle.
Dark circles of skin were definitely tenting the cotton. Kilian wondered if it really made a difference. Banneth was a hermaphrodite—by
design, so rumour said. She looked as if she was about twenty, either as a male or a female; though age was an easy enough
cosmetic adaptation. Nobody knew how old she really was, nor even how long she had been High Magus. In fact, legend and rumour
were all that existed about her past. Questions were discouraged.
“Thank you for coming to see me,” Banneth said. Her hand stroked Kilian’s cheek, the cool skin of her knuckles drifting gently
along his cheekbone. An appraisal by a gifted sculptor, finding his exact form. He quivered at the touch. Pink eyes with feline
irises blinked in amusement at his reaction.
“Nervous, Kilian?”
“I don’t know what I’ve done, High Magus.”
“That’s true. But then a barely human grunt like you doesn’t know much of anything. Do you? Well don’t worry yourself too
much. Actually, you’ve been quite useful to me.”
“I have?”
“Amazingly, yes. And as you know, I always reward the devout.”
“Yes, High Magus.”
“What can I do for you now, I wonder?” She began to circle the apprehensive acolyte, grinning boyishly. “You’re how old now?
Twenty-five, isn’t it? So I ask myself what does a nice young boy your age always want. And the answer’s a much bigger cock,
of course. That’s pretty standard. I can do that, you know. I can snip off that pitiful rat-sized cock you’ve got now, and
replace it with something much better. A cock that’s as long as your forearm and as hard as steel. You would like me to do
that, wouldn’t you?”
“Please, High Magus,” Kilian whimpered.
“Was that a ‘yes please,’ Kilian?”
“I… I just want to help you. However I can.”
She blew him a kiss, still prowling her circuit around him. “Good boy. I asked to see you because I’d like to know something.
Do you believe in the teachings of the Light Bringer?”
Trick question
, Kilian screamed silently. If I say no, she’ll do whatever she wants as punishment; if I say yes she’ll ask me to prove it
through endurance. “All of it High Magus, every word. I’ve found my serpent beast.”
“An excellent answer, Kilian. Now tell me this: do you welcome the coming darkness?”
“Yes, High Magus.”
“Really? And how do you know it’s coming?”
Kilian risked a glance over his shoulder, trying to follow the High Magus as she circled round him. But she was directly behind
him now, and the only thing he really noticed was the way the eyes of the acolytes in the life support containers were tracking
her movements. “The possessed are here. He sent them, our Lord. They’re going to bring His Night to the whole world.”
“So everyone says. The whole arcology is talking about nothing else. Indeed the whole planet has little else to say. But how
do you know? You, Kilian?”
Banneth stopped in front of him, lips curved in a sympathetic, expectant smile.
I’ll have to tell the truth, Kilian realized in horror. But I don’t know if that’s what she wants to hear. Fuck! Oh God’s
Brother, what’ll she do to me if it’s wrong? What will she turn me into?
“Cat got your tongue?” Banneth asked coyly. The smile hardened slightly, becoming less playful. Her glance flicked to one
of the life support canisters containing a puma. “Of course, I can give the cat your tongue, Kilian. But what would I fit
in its place? What would be appropriate do you think? I have so much material I don’t really need any more. Some of it is
long past its sell-by date. Ever felt flesh that’s started to decay, Kilian? Necromorphology is a somewhat acquired taste.
You never know, though, you might get to like it in time.”
“I saw one!” Kilian shouted. “Oh fuck, I saw one. I’m sorry High Magus, I didn’t tell my sergeant acolyte, I…”
She kissed his ear lobe, shocking him into silence. “I understand,” she whispered. “Really I do. To understand the way people
think, you must first understand the way they work. And I’ve made the workings of the human body my special area of study
for a long time. Physiology begets psychology, you might say. Mightn’t you, Kilian?”
Kilian
hated
it when the High Magus talked all this weird big-word shit. He never knew how to answer. None of the acolytes did, not even
the seniors.
“It—I saw him in the Vegreville dome coven’s chapel,” Kilian said. He knew for sure now that the High Magus wanted to hear
about the possessed. Maybe this would get him off the hook.
Banneth stopped her pacing, standing directly in front of the woeful acolyte. There were no more smiles left on her androgynous
face. “You didn’t tell your sergeant acolyte because you thought you’d wind up in deep shit. Because if the possessed are
real, then the sect hierarchy that you’ve so devoutly been kissing ass to for the last six years will be replaced by them.
By telling everyone what you’d seen you would in effect be spreading sedition; though I doubt you would be able to rationalize
it quite like that. To you it was simple instinct. Your serpent beast looks after you, it puts you first. As indeed it should,
in that respect you’ve been loyal to yourself and God’s Brother. Of course, you couldn’t resist telling a few people, could
you? You should have known better, Kilian. You know I reward acolytes who betray their friends to me.”
“Yes, High Magus,” Kilian mumbled.
“Well I’m glad that’s settled then. Unfortunately the golden rule of the sect is that I am to be told everything. I and I
alone decide what is important, and what is not.” Banneth walked over to one of the stainless steel tables, and tapped a finger
on it. “Come over here, Kilian. Lie down for me.”
“
Please
, High Magus.”
“Now.”
If he’d thought running would have done him the slightest good, he would have run. Actually, he even had the wild thought
that he could attack Banneth. The High Magus was physically weaker. But that idea was resolved in a second by a simple clash
of wills. He was foolish enough to glance at her pink eyes.
“That’s a very bad thought,” Banneth said. “I don’t like that at all.”
Kilian walked over to the table, taking the smallest steps possible. In the faintly violet light thrown out by the life support
containers, he could see the scuffed silvery surface was sprinkled with small black flecks of dried blood.