Cabal (24 page)

‘Ten minutes maybe, before sundown,’ Boone said. ‘Then the world’s ours.’

Eigerman shook his head.

‘You’re not getting me,’ he said. ‘I won’t let you get me!’

His backward steps multiplied and suddenly he was away at speed, not looking behind him. Had he done so, he would have seen that Boone was not interested in pursuit. He was moving instead towards the besieged gates of Midian. Ashbery was still on the ground there.

‘Get up,’
Boone told him.

‘If you’re going to kill me, do it will you?’ Ashbery said. ‘Get it over with.’

‘Why should I kill you?’ Boone said.

‘I’m a priest.’

‘So?’

‘You’re a monster.’

‘And you’re not?’

Ashbery looked up at Boone.

‘Me?’

‘There’s lace under the robe,’ Boone said.

Ashbery pulled together the tear in his cassock.

‘Why hide it?’

‘Let me alone.’

‘Forgive yourself,’ Boone said. ‘I did.’

He walked on past Ashbery to the gates.

‘Wait!’ the priest said.

‘I’d get going if I were you. They don’t like the robes in Midian. Bad memories.’

‘I want to see,’ Ashbery said.

‘Why?’

‘Please. Take me with you.’

‘It’s your risk.’

‘I’ll take it.’

From a distance it was hard to be sure of what was going on down at the cemetery gates, but of two facts the doctor was sure: Boone had returned, and somehow bested Eigerman. At the first sight of his arrival Decker had taken shelter in one of the police vehicles. There he sat now, briefcase in hand, trying to plot his next action.

It was difficult, with two voices each counselling different things. His public self demanded retreat, before events became any more dangerous.

Leave now
, it said.
Just drive away. Let them all die together
.

There was wisdom in this. With night almost fallen, and Boone there to rally them, Midian’s hosts might still triumph If they did, and they found Decker, his heart would be ripped from his chest.

But there was another voice demanding his attention.

Stay
, it said.

The voice of the Mask, rising from the case on his lap.

You’ve denied me here once already
, it said.

So he had, knowing when he did it there’d come a time for repaying the debt.

‘Not now,’ he whispered.

Now
, it said.

He knew rational argument carried no weight against its hunger; nor did pleading.

Use your eyes
, it said.
I’ve got work to do
.

What did it see that he didn’t? He stared out through the window.

Don’t you see her?

Now he did. In his fascination with Boone, naked at the gates, he’d missed the other newcomer to the field: Boone’s woman.

Do you see the bitch?
the Mask said.

‘I see her.’

Perfect timing, eh? In this chaos who’s going to see me finish her off? Nobody. And with her gone there’ll be no-one left who knows our secret
.

‘There’s still Boone.’

He’ll never testify
, the Mask laughed.
He’s a dead man, for Christ’s sake. What’s a zombie’s word worth, tell me that?

‘Nothing,’ Decker said.

Exactly. He’s no danger to us. But the woman is. Let me silence her
.

‘Suppose you’re seen?’

Suppose I am
, the Mask said.
They’ll think I was one of Midian’s clan all along
.

‘Not you,’ Decker said.

The thought of his precious Other being confused with the degenerates of Midian nauseated him.

‘You’re pure,’ he said.

Let me prove it
, the Mask coaxed.

‘Just the woman?’

Just the woman. Then we’ll leave
.

He knew the advice made sense. They’d never have a better opportunity of killing the bitch.

He started to unlock the case. Inside, the Mask grew agitated.

Quickly or we’ll lose her
.

His fingers slid on the dial as he ran the numbers of the lock.

Quickly, damn you
.

The final digit clicked into place. The lock sprang open.

Ol’ Button Face was never more beautiful.

Though Boone had advised Lori to stay with Narcisse, the sight of Midian in flames was enough to draw her companion away from the safety of the hill and down towards the cemetery gates. Lori went with him a little way, but her presence seemed to intrude upon his grief, so she hung back a few paces, and in the smoke and deepening twilight was soon divided from him.

The scene before her was one of utter confusion. Any attempt to complete the assault on the necropolis had ceased since Boone had sent Eigerman running. Both his men and their civilian support had retreated from around the walls. Some had already driven away, most likely fearing what would happen when the sun sank over the horizon. Most remained however, prepared to beat a retreat if necessary, but mesmerized by the spectacle of destruction. Her gaze went from one to another, looking for some sign of what they were feeling, but every face was blank. They looked like death masks, she thought, wiped of response. Except that she
knew
the dead now. She walked with them, talked with them. Saw them feel and weep. Who then were the
real
dead? The silent hearted, who still knew pain, or their glassy-eyed tormentors?

A break in the smoke uncovered the sun, teetering on the rim of the world. The red light dazzled her. She closed her eyes against it.

In the darkness, she heard a breath a little way behind her. She opened her eyes, and began to turn, knowing harm was coming. Too late to slip it. The Mask was a yard from her, and closing.

She had seconds only before the knife found her, but it was long enough to see the Mask as she’d never seen it before. Here was the blankness on the faces she’d studied perfectly perfected; the human fiend made myth. No use to call it
Decker
. It wasn’t Decker. No use to call it anything. It was as far beyond names as she was beyond power to tame it.

It slashed her arm. Once, and again.

There were no taunts from it this time. It had come only to despatch her.

The wounds stung. Instinctively she put her hand to them, her motion giving him opportunity to kick the legs from under her. She had no time to cushion her fall. The impact emptied her lungs. Sobbing for breath, she turned her face to the ground to keep it from the knife. The earth seemed to shudder beneath her. Illusion, surely. Yet it came again.

She glanced up at the Mask. He too had felt the tremors, and was looking towards the cemetery. His distraction would be her only reprieve; she had to take it. Rolling out of his shadow she got to her feet. There was no sign of Narcisse, or Rachel; nor much hope of help from the death-masks, who’d forsaken their vigil and were hurrying away from the smoke as the tremors intensified. Fixing her eyes on the gate through which Boone had stepped, she stumbled down the hill, the dusty soil dancing at her feet.

The source of the agitation was Midian. Its cue, the disappearance of the sun, and with it the light that had trapped the Breed underground. It was their noise that made the ground shake, as they destroyed their refuge. What was below could remain below no longer.

The Nightbreed were rising
.

The knowledge didn’t persuade her from her course. Whatever was loose inside the gate she’d long ago made her peace with it, and might expect mercy. From the horror at her back, matching her stride for stride, she could expect none.

There were only the fires from the tombs up ahead to light her way now, a way strewn with the debris of the siege: petrol cans, shovels, discarded weapons. She was almost at the gates before she caught sight of Babette standing close to the wall, her face terror stricken.

‘Run
!’ she yelled, afraid the Mask would wound the child.

Babette did as she was told, her body seeming to melt into beast as she turned and fled through the gates. Lori came a few paces after her, but by the time she was over the threshold the child had already gone, lost down the smoke filled avenues. The tremors here were strong enough to unseat the paving stones, and topple the mausoleums, as though some force underground – Baphomet, perhaps, Who Made Midian – was shaking its foundations to bring the place to ruin. She hadn’t anticipated such violence; her chances of surviving the cataclysm were slim.

But better to be buried in the rubble than succumb to the Mask. And be flattered, at the end, that Fate had at least offered her a choice of extinctions.

I
n the cell back at Shere Neck memories of Midian’s labyrinth had tormented Boone. Closing his eyes against the sun he’d found himself lost here, only to open them again and find the maze echoed in the whirls of his fingertips and the veins on his arms. Veins in which no heat ran; reminders, like Midian, of his shame.

Lori had broken that spell of despair, coming to him not begging but
demanding
he forgive himself.

Now, back in the avenues from which his monstrous condition had sprung, he felt her love for him like the life his body no longer possessed.

He needed its comfort, in the pandemonium. The Nightbreed were not simply bringing Midian down, they were erasing all clue to their nature or keepsake of their passing. He saw them at work on every side, labouring to finish what Eigerman’s scourge had begun. Gathering up the pieces of their dead and throwing them into the flames; burning their beds, their clothes, anything they couldn’t take with them.

These were not the only preparations for escape. He glimpsed the Breed in forms he’d never before had the honour to see: unfurling wings, unfolding limbs. One becoming many (a man, a flock); many becoming one (three lovers, a cloud). All around, the rites of departure.

Ashbery was still at Boone’s side, agog.

‘Where are they going?’

‘I’m too late,’ Boone said. ‘They’re leaving Midian.’

The lid of a tomb ahead flew off, and a ghost form rose like a rocket into the night sky.

‘Beautiful,’ Ashbery said. ‘What are they? Why have I never known them?’

Boone shook his head. He had no way to describe the Breed that were not the old ways. They didn’t belong to Hell; nor yet to Heaven. They were what the species he’d once belonged to could not bear to be. The un-people; the
anti
-tribe; humanity’s sack unpicked and sewn together again with the moon inside.

And now, before he’d a chance to know them – and by knowing them, know
himself
– he was losing them. They were finding transport in their cells, and rising to the night.

‘Too late,’ he said again, the pain of this parting bringing tears to his eyes.

The escapes were gathering momentum. On every side doors were being thrown wide, and slabs overturned, as the spirits ascended in innumerable forms. Not all flew. Some went as goat or tiger, racing through the flames to the gate. Most went alone, but some – whose fecundity neither death nor Midian had slowed – went with families of six or more, their littlest in their arms. He was witnessing, he knew, the passing of an age, the end of which had begun the moment he’d first stepped on Midian’s soil. He was the maker of this devastation, though he’d set no fire and toppled no tomb. He had brought men to Midian. In doing so, he’d destroyed it. Even Lori could not persuade him to forgive himself that. The thought might have tempted him to the flames, had he not heard the child calling his name.

She was only human enough to use words; the rest was beast.

‘Lori,’
she said.

‘What about her?’

‘The Mask has her.’

The Mask? She could only mean Decker.

‘Where?’

Close, and closer still.

Knowing she couldn’t outpace him she tried instead to out
dare
him, going where she hoped he would not. But he was too hot for her life to be shaken off. He followed her into territory where the ground erupted beneath their feet, and smoking stone rained around them.

It was not his voice that called her, however.

‘Lori! This way!’

She chanced a desperate look, and there –
God love him
! – was Narcisse, beckoning. She veered off the pathway, or what was left of it, towards him, ducking between two mausoleums as their stained glass blew, and a stream of shadow, pricked with eyes, left its hiding place for the stars. It was like a piece of night sky itself, she marvelled. It belonged in the heavens.

The sight slowed her pace by an all but fatal step. The Mask closed the gap between them and snatched at her blouse. She threw herself forward to avoid the stab she knew must follow, the fabric tearing as she fell. This time he had her. Even as she reached for the wall to haul herself to her feet she felt his gloved hand at her nape.