First and Only (28 page)

The arrogance remained; there was
defiance in him yet. But Lucifer watched as it melted away, running in rivulets
from his eyes.

‘
You will learn humility and
you will die
,’ thought Lucifer as he cleared his mind to pray.

‘Do you confess to those in
dominion?’ he began.

‘And to these my brothers and
sisters,

‘That you have sinned,

‘In your thoughts and in your
words,

‘In what you have done and in
what you have failed to do?

‘And do you ask the blessed
chorus, ever present,

‘And all the angels and saints,

‘And these my brothers and
sisters,

‘To pray for you to those in dominion.

‘That the almighty might have
mercy on you,

‘Forgive you your sins,

‘And bring you to everlasting
truth.

‘Amen.’

The tears flooded down Psimon’s
face and every fibre of his being screamed at him to confess; to do whatever it
took to escape the pain. But man is more than fibre and he found that he could
not. He drew a ragged, sobbing breath and…

‘No, he softly said.

The killer frowned and let the
cleansing vial fall.

Psimon screamed a sinew-snapping
scream, a scream to shred his lungs. The splashes of acid ate away his skin,
devoured his flesh and fizzed against his bones. Burning worse than any fire.
Pain enough to drive one mad. He collapsed onto his side writhing and thrashing
in agony.

‘
YES!
’ he screamed. ‘
YES! I CONFESS!
’

Lucifer smiled.

The cleansing had begun.

*

Steve did not take the farmer’s
advice. He did not go up to the roundabout. He crossed straight over to the
other side of the road hugging the verge as he sped the wrong way down the
inside lane of the dual carriageway.

Coming from this direction he was
not sure which the ‘third turning on the left’ would be, so he looked instead
for an entrance with a ‘big pylon’ beside it. And there it was, just a few
hundred metres ahead, a big electricity pylon beside yet another private road.

Steve turned into the drive,
skidding and bouncing along the poorly maintained driveway. The Kawasaki was
not suited to such terrain and he had to fight to keep it upright, finally a
deep pothole proved too much and the bike slid out from under him. He was sent
sprawling across the road but he scrambled up immediately running back to the
bike and heaving it upright. He made several attempts to get it started but the
engine would not bite.

‘
Shit!
’ thought Steve,
letting the bike fall back down.

In the darkness ahead he could
make out the shape of buildings. Better just to run.

*

The witness lay moaning in his
own filth, his head resting on the flagstones, blood and drool hanging from his
mouth and nose.

Lucifer was disgusted.

There was no defiance now, no
vanity of self. The witness was broken. A witless corpse too lost in pain to
know that it was dead. There remained just one thing left to do, to shroud the
witness in his funeral garb and to take from him the breath of life, the breath
that had given voice to his lies.

Lucifer went and brought a shroud
but when the witness saw it he found the strength to recoil in a final gesture
of horror. His eyes stared and he squirmed away like something that lived in
the earth. But Lucifer took a step and knelt beside him and placed the shroud
over his head pulling it down the length of his body until he was enclosed.

*

Steve slowed as he approached the
buildings. There were no lights on in the house, no sign of life at all, and no
sign of the black Mercedes van.

Could he have got it wrong?

Could there be more than one
house with a large pylon standing beside the drive?

‘
Please, God
,’ he thought.
‘
Please, God
.’

He padded into the yard, house to
the left, a large barn straight ahead and several stone-built outhouses to the
right. This had once been a working farm.

Steve looked around.

But for the light of a gibbous
moon it would have been too dark to see. He approached the barn but it was
locked. He tried to peer in through cracks in the side but the moon’s light did
not extend that far. The sense of despair returned as the fear that he might be
at the wrong place took hold.

‘
This has to be the place
,’
he told himself. ‘
It has to be
.’

He started towards the house. But
just as he turned away from the barn something caught his attention. The trees
surrounding the outhouses seemed to be faintly illuminated by something other
than the pale light of the moon. There was another source of light.

Steve started towards the stone
buildings to the right. Two of them were simple sheds but one of them looked
like an old grain store, a large circular building built from undressed stone.
Something in Steve’s memory pricked up at this; something that Psimon had said,
something about an old stone church with circular walls. Steve’s heart rate quickened
as he approached the peculiar old building. And when he reached the arched
wooden door he knew.

There was a large black cross in
the door and a thin crack of light at its base.

Someone was inside.

In the pallid gloom Steve looked
to see if there was a lock. There was but he could see, by the way the door was
lying, that the lock was not engaged. Steve put his eye to the keyhole… church
pews in candlelight, an altar, and wait… someone crouching down before it, a
priest or an altar boy dressed in a black robe and filthy white surcoat. But
this was no priest or servant of the church. The figure stood and in so doing
revealed itself in all its size. Few men cut such a form at such a scale.

Steve had found the killer but
was Psimon still alive?

*

Psimon was utterly helpless.
Panic fluttered in his mind like the wings of a trapped bird, while his heart
beat out the meter of his death.

‘
No
,’ he thought. ‘
Not
yet… you can’t. Please no…
’

But he had no breath for words,
only breath for fear; fear in panting gasps that drew the plastic against his
face and blew it away in a transparent misty veil.

*

Lucifer stood up from the witness
and went to get the hose. He bent to make sure that one end was properly
attached to the pump then he grabbed the other and took a plastic tie to secure
the shroud.

He did not hear the tiny click of
iron as a latch was raised with utmost care.

He returned to the witness and
pushed the hose up into the shroud.

He did not hear the slow scrape
of wood on stone or the faint complaint of a rusty hinge.

He gathered the shroud together
around the witness’s ankles and secured it with the plastic tie.

He did not hear the stealthy
footfalls on the flagstones of the chapel.

But when he stood he felt the
movement in the air.

And when he turned he saw the
angel standing there.

*

Steve froze as the killer’s eyes
fell upon him. But he did not shrink in fear. He met the malice in those dead
black eyes and when he spoke his voice was calm and steady and weighted with
the promise of violence.

‘Where is he?’ Steve demanded.

By way of an answer the killer
looked down at his feet, and when he looked up he raised his arms as if to say
‘behold’.

Steve looked down to the shape
lying at the killer’s feet; a large, clear polythene bag with something pale
inside. At first he did not see it for what it was but then, feeling suddenly
sick, he did.

‘Psimon!’ he cried, taking an
involuntary step forwards down the aisle.

The killer stepped over Psimon’s
body, coming to stand protectively before his prize.

Steve’s eyes flicked from the
killer to the obscene shape of Psimon’s naked body in the bag.

‘
He’s dead…Oh, God he’s dead!
’

But then the bag moved and Steve
heard a quiet, pitiful moan.

‘
Alive!
’ Thought Steve,
the relief sweeping through his mind. ‘
He’s alive.
’

But for how long?

The bag was tied around his
ankles and Steve knew that he could not survive for long on the air that
remained inside the bag. He had to get him out and quick. But first he had to
get past the killer.

Steve looked up at the killer and
saw his eyes shift to the side of the chapel, to what looked like a small
generator or pump. There was a black hose connected to the pump and Steve’s
eyes followed it as it snaked across the floor. The other end had been pushed
between Psimon’s feet up into the bag. Steve frowned at the killer’s depravity
then looked up at him once more.

For a second the two men held
each other’s gaze and then, as if at some unspoken command, they started
towards each other. Steve moved in slow measured steps, while the killer came
on more quickly enraged that the angel was here in this most sacred place.

Steve let him come, this mountain
of a man. And when he reached for him Steve moved with lightening speed. He
caught the killer’s arm, took a handful of his dirty robes and swivelled at the
waist, using the killer’s own momentum as he threw him over his hip. The
killer’s feet crashed into the wooden pews as Steve slammed him down against
the hard stone floor.  With his left hand he kept hold of the killer’s robes
holding him down while he punched him in the face. It was like punching a
boulder but he did it again and again, searching for that perfect blow that
would do some real damage. But the killer was not so easily subdued. He let out
an animal growl and grabbed hold of Steve’s clothes and Steve witnessed his
terrible strength as he was hurled aside.

The killer came quickly to his
feet but Steve was quicker. Before the killer had risen fully to his feet Steve
launched a scissor-kick and rammed his heel into the killer’s jaw. The hefty
kick rocked the killer and he swayed on one knee, unable to stand. Steve closed
quickly, broke his nose with a solid punch, then hammered his elbow into the
killer’s face. The killer’s arms reached out blindly for Steve, blood pouring
from his nose, his mouth and a cut above his eye, then his eyes rolled back and
he collapsed heavily to one side.

Steve raced to Psimon’s side.

‘
Not too late!
’ he prayed.
‘
Please, not too late!
’

He knelt down beside his friend
and paused for just an instant at the awful sight. Psimon’s body was covered in
blood and bruises, his face misshapen, his eyes flickering as the air in the
bag turned bad, poisoned by his own exhalations. Steve went to his ankles,
tried to break the plastic tie and tug the plastic free. He could do neither.
He grabbed the bag near Psimon’s face and tried to tear it with his hands but
it was industrial strength polythene and simply would not tear. He pulled out
the hose and tugged at the bag, drawing air through the narrow gaps at Psimon’s
ankles and he saw Psimon gulping down a breath as the small amount of air in
the bag was replenished.

‘Hang on, Psimon,’ he said. ‘Hang
on. I’ll get you out of there.’

Steve looked round for something
to cut or tear the heavy plastic.

He did not see the warning look
in Psimon’s eyes.

He did not see the vast shape of
a man rising from the chapel floor.

Steve put his teeth to the
polythene but still it proved too strong. Then…

‘
Car keys
,’ he thought.

He put his hand in his pocket and
pulled out his keys. He had just managed to single out the sharp metal rod of
the car key when the killer fell upon him.

Steve felt like he had been hit
by a falling tree as the killer brought a massive fist down across his back. He
collapsed onto the floor beside Psimon, winded and dazed. Then he was lifted
from the stone as the killer kicked him in the side. The kick cracked several
of Steve’s ribs and he groaned with the pain as he got up on his hands and
knees. Then the killer strode up next to him and kicked Steve in the face sending
him flailing back against the altar.

Stars and black blotches swam in
Steve’s vision as he clawed at the great marble altar trying in vain to stand
but the killer came up behind him and punched him in the small of his back then
hammered a massive fist down at the base of Steve’s neck.

This would have been enough to
finish most men but Steve Brennus was not ‘most men’ and he tried again to
stand. With a sneer of disdain the killer reached down and took hold of the
smaller man. He hooked one of Steve’s arms in the crook of his elbow and placed
his huge hands behind Steve’s head, then he began to squeeze.

Steve grunted as the killer
lifted him from the floor. His left arm was pinned and he thought his neck
would break with the force of the killer’s hold. He flailed about with his free
arm but there was no way of reaching back at the killer. Then, looking down, he
saw a small push-knife on the altar. The knife was out of reach but not so a
large brass candlestick. As his breathing grew ever more constrained Steve
reached out and grabbed hold of the candlestick. The thick candle fell away and
Steve used the empty stick to try and reach the knife. He got the lip of the
candlestick behind it and drew it closer, and closer yet but just as he was
about to pull it within reach the killer jerked him up. The knife was sent
clattering away to the foot of the altar.

Rage and frustration surged
through Steve and with a final effort he lifted his feet, placed them against
the altar, and shoved with all his might. The killer stumbled back, taking
Steve with him. He lost his footing on the small step at the base of the altar
and the two men came crashing down into the pews at the front of the chapel.