The Fuller Memorandum

Then the true horror show begins.

THEY’RE CULTISTS. WORSE: THEY’RE THE BROTHERHOOD OF THE Black Pharaoh, hated and persecuted wherever they are exposed to the horrified gaze of ordinary people.

Why?

There is a pernicious and evil legend that comes down to us from ancient history: the legend of the Blood Libel. It’s a regular, recurring slander that echoes down the ages, hurled against out-groups when an excuse for a pogrom or other form of mass slaughter is desired. The Blood Libel is a whisper that says that the strangers sacrifice babies and drink their blood. There are variant forms: the babies are stolen from good Christian households, the blood is baked into bread, the babies are their own incestuous get by way of the bodies of their own daughters. No embellishment is too vile or grotesque to find its way into the Blood Libel. The most frequent victims are Jews, but it’s been used against many other groups-the Cathars, Zoroastrians, Kulaks, Communists, you name it. The Romans regularly used it against the early Christians, and doubtless they’d stolen it from somebody else. Its origins are lost in antiquity, but the sole purpose of the Blood Libel is to motivate those who believe it to say: “These people are not like us, and we need to kill them, now.”

I always used to think that was all there was to it.

But now I know better; I’ve witnessed the wellspring of the bloody legend and seen its practitioners in action.

And I’m still in their hands.

16. EATER OF SOULS

MEANWHILE, SOME DISTANCE ABOVE MY HEAD, HERE’S WHAT happens as Iris’s rite runs to completion:

Benjamin paces around the Chapel of the Ancient and Honourable Order of Wheelwrights, nostrils flaring to take in the sweet summer night air, heavy with pollen and sweet with the scent of new-mown hay.

Benjamin is a mild-ma

Epping is one stop down the line from Barking, which is what the neighbors would think of him if they could see him now, wearing the black cloak of a member of a very different Order, and carrying a gun that fires something more substantial than paint pellets.

Grigori, in contrast, is not mild-ma

Grigori does not play paintball; Grigori kills people.

Here comes Grigori, crawling silently through the bushes, taking care not to place hand or foot on any twig that might snap, nor to disturb leafy shrubs that might whisper in the darkness. He pauses regularly, glancing sidelong to maintain situational awareness and positioning relative to his comrades, neither too far ahead nor lagging behind the line of advance. They use no radio; the occasional flicker of a red LED torch or the hoot of a tawny owl are more than sufficient. Grigori pauses before the open apron of the parking lot in front of the chapel, waiting for the sentry to complete his round. While he pauses, he double-checks his crossbow. The body is made of black resin and the bow sports a profusion of pulleys. It’s a hunting bow, fine-tuned for hunting the kind of game that shoots back on full auto; it’s totally silent and it throws a cyanide-tipped bolt that can slice through five centimeters of Kevlar armor.

Here comes Benjamin, pacing quietly around the side of the chapel. Benjamin is a good sentry. He’s been bushwhacked by rival paintball players often enough to be ambush-savvy, sca

Grigori and Benjamin are not as mismatched as a superficial comparison might suggest. Grigori’s lieutenant has meticulously pla

But as Grigori and Benjamin are about to discover, they’ve both been briefed for the wrong mission.

Benjamin pauses in the shadow of an ornamental buttress at one corner of the chapel, and scans the darkness beyond. There are low shrubs, and a row of lichen-encrusted gravestones, some of them leaning towards a low dip in the ground where a willow tree holds court over a circle of beeches. He sniffs. There’s something in the air tonight-something beyond the efflorescences of pollen spurting from the wildly rutting vegetation, something beyond the tang of mold spores drifting from the cut ends of the lawn over by the road. His eyes narrow. Something about the bushes is wrong.

His pager vibrates. He peers into the gloom, tensing and raising the heavy shotgun, and tries to move his right foot forward into a shooter’s stance.

His boot is stuck…

Grigori crouches in the darkness behind a drunkenly leaning gravestone. His nostrils flare. The ground here smells bad, in a way that reminds him of a mass grave outside a nameless village near Rakhata in the mountains above Botlikh. Damp ground, rainy hills, and a season of death had soured the very earth, making the nauseous soil threaten to regurgitate its charges. After a week on duty there he’d had to indent for a new pair of boots: no matter how he scrubbed and polished he couldn’t get the stench of death out of his old ones.

Grigori frowns, and raises his bow, sighting on the buttress to the right of the chapel, where he is sure the sentry will appear in a few seconds. His view is partially obstructed by the gravestone, so he tries to move his left foot sideways a few centimeters.

His boot refuses to shift.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the chapel wall, Benjamin slaps his pager into silence then tries to lift his right foot again, freeing it from the root or wire or whatever he’s caught on. His left knee nearly buckles. Something has caught on his right ankle. Cursing silently, he glances down.

Grigori’s nostrils widen as he smells rotte