Demon

Cirocco nodded, and entered the pool. In a moment she was floating just below the surface. In half a rev she came out, and her long hair, soaking and plastered to her shoulders, was glossy black.

Chris stayed in the longest. When he came out he was almost an inch taller and his face had changed slightly. Cirocco put Robin back into a light trance and Chris lifted her with Adam in her arms. With a glance over his shoulder at Cirocco, Chris set out to take Robin back to Tuxedo Junction, and to make his proposition.

FIVE

Luther stalked the docks of a Bellinzona as empty of people as the dusty streets of the western town in High Noon, with Gary Cooper. It is possible his mind made the co

He didn't look like Gary Cooper. He looked like Frankenstein's monster after a three-day bender and a car wreck. Most of the left side of his face was gone, baring some jawbone and cracked teeth, part of a mastoid, and a hollow eye socket. Greenish brain tissue showed through a ragged crack in his skull, as if it had leaked out and been haphazardly stuffed back in. His remaining eye was a black pit in a red sea, blazing with righteous fury. Sutures encircled his neck, not scars, but actual thick threads piercing the skin. If they were removed, his head would have fallen off.

All of his body but his hands was concealed behind a filthy black cassock. The hands bore stigmata which wept blood and pus. One of his legs was shorter than the other. It was not a deformity, but a simple mechanical problem: the leg had once belonged to a nun. It did not slow him down.

There was no need to hide, and Luther made no attempt to. It wasn't easy for him and his band at the best of times. Luther was no delight to the nose, but his Apostles' aroma could stun a hog at fifty paces. Even humans, with their atrophied sense of smell, could usually detect Luther long before he hove into view. Sometimes a downwind stalk worked, but lately the Bellinzonans seemed to have developed a sixth sense where Priests were concerned.

His twelve Apostles shuffled along behind him. Compared to them, Luther was a beauty.

They were nothing but zombies, but Luther had once been Pastor Arthur Lundquist, of the American Unified Lutheran Church in Urbana, Illinois. Urbana had been destroyed long ago, and so had Pastor Lundquist, for the most part. Bits and pieces of him had once belonged to other people-Gaea assembled her Priests from the material at hand. But from time to time a stray thought of home passed through his murky brain, a thought of the wife and two children. It tortured him, and made him all the more zealous in God's work. A lot of air passed through his brain as well, the result of the gunshot wound which had given him his distinctive smile and ma

He marched up to the edge of the zone of death that led to the Free Female quarter. His eye sca

"Enemies of God!" he shouted, or at least tried to. With his left cheek missing he had trouble with any sound that required lips. Enemies came out sounding like "enaweesh."

"I auw Luther! I auw here on a wission of God!"

An arrow sizzled on a flat trajectory and hit him in the chest. All but the feathers went through him. Luther did not even bother to break it off, nor did he move his hands from his hips.

A Free Female hurried out to the bridge, a torch in her hand. She threw it on the oil which had been spread at the first rumor of Luther's band in Bellinzona. A wall of fire sprang up between Luther and the Quarter. It began consuming the bridge. The woman hurried back to cover.

"A child was vrought to thish blace wany ... sheveral revs ago. God hash need of thish child. God will schwile on she who tells we the whereavouts of thish child. Cuf forward, cuf forward, and resheive God's grashe!"

No one sprang forth to receive any grace. Luther had expected it, but it still enraged him. He began to howl. He shouted obscenities at the burning bridge, he turned in quick circles and stamped his long leg up and down on the planks of the dock. Soon blood was ru

"A whitey for-or-tresh iih our God!

A sword and shield victorious;

He vrakes the cruel offressor's rod

And wins salvation glorious!"

Verse after verse, the tone-deaf Priest shouted the hymn in a fractured, sibilant bass, bellowing when he forgot the words. It was not the words that mattered, anyway, but the Power, and he felt it on him as he had few times since his resurrection. He reached out, remembered the days when he had preached sermons from his pulpit. He had been something of a thunderer in those days, but nothing like he was today. God would be proud of him. Behind him, even the worm-eaten zombies were moved. They whimpered as if trying to sing, their slack tongues hanging from their horrible mouths and wagging as their bodies swayed.

And here she came, a single Free Female, standing and throwing aside her weapon. Her smile was a chaotic rictus, her eyes bright and empty as moonies.

The Free Females were screaming. They had started when Luther began his feculent hymn, and now they redoubled their efforts. They did not scream from fear-though they were all terrified to the depths of their souls-but as a tactic, to drown out the Power. It was a many-throated, astonishing warble, after the ma

She came forward. An arrow followed her, but the hand that loosed it had trembled too much for it to fly true. It missed, and so did a second. The third sank into her back. She shuddered, but kept walking.

The Free Females were not shooting out of contempt, or because they thought her a traitor. They knew too well the Power of Luther to cloud women's minds. They shot at her because death was the merciful alternative.

"The old evil foe, sworn to work us woe

With dread and craft and wight he arms himself to fight.

On Earth he has no equal!"

She walked into the flames.

Two more arrows hit her. She fell to her hands and knees as her hair went up like dry tinder. She continued to crawl, blackening. She struggled to her feet, hearing nothing, blinded, and a burning board broke under her. She fell backwards and rolled off the bridge into the water.

Luther stopped singing and stood up. He watched, smiling as half a dozen Free Females broke from their hiding places and ran forward, shielding their faces from the heat of the flames and his own awful presence. Several of them made horns at him, which amused him even more. Did they really think sticking out pinkie and index finger would protect them?

They caught their sister's body with a rope and pulled it onto the deck. She still lived, but that was a minor point. Had she been dead, they would have gone for her with even more determination. Now she could die and have a chance to stay dead.

"God will funish you!" Luther shouted, then turned to his troops. "Andrew! John! Thaddeus! Phil ... Judas!" Five zombies stepped forward, including Philip, whose dim awareness had been unable to decide if he, too, had been called. Luther waved him back impatiently. It was always these four when Luther wanted something done, and the reason was not mysterious. The other eight had a b, m, or p in their names. The names of two-thirds of his disciples were unpronounceable tongue-twisters to Luther.