"Mr. Wages is quite clever," Bert volunteered.
Jake's eyes darted from Bert's gun up to his face and then over to me. The look of utter disbelief was etched into his craggy face. Words failed the big man.
"What about it, Bert?" I pushed. "Am I right? Are you the Emissary?"
Jake was still stunned. "I don't understand what's goin' on here."
"The pieces are falling into place," I continued. "Your old friend Bert here didn't bother to seek sanctuary in the old schoolhouse when you enforced the curfew because he knew there was no danger, and little Angie standing back there was equally safe. They knew exactly what was going on. They didn't need to be concerned."
The smile inched its way back into Bert's haggard face. "So far, so good, Mr. Wages. I'm sure Angela is equally impressed. What else have you figured out?"
"It's a pretty good guess that you're the one who killed Vernice and the old Austin woman, right?"
"Those of us who receive the calling are blessed, Mr. Wages. You surely understand that we are the chosen few among the many. And once a true believer has been chosen, there is no room for those with a wavering commitment. Vernice became involved with our local peace officer. We discussed it and found it to be a completely intolerable situation. As we grew near to the great moment of the equinoctial awakening, there was too much danger that she would reveal herself to our esteemed friend. We could not risk that. The course of action was clear. The holy Emissary gave me my instructions, and I followed them."
"And Glenna Austin?"
"She fulfilled her commitment," Bert said evenly, "but she was beginning to talk too much. In a way, Mr. Wages, you are responsible for her death. If you and your skinny companion had not been quite so nosy and stumbled into her home to discover the sarcophagus, she might have been allowed to live long enough to share in this momentous event with us. But she was revealing more and more, and it was a risk we could not take."
"You… you're the one who killed Vernice?" Jake repeated in a hollow voice. His usually gruff voice had deteriorated to a barely perceptible tremor.
"There is no place in the domain of the Ancient of Ancients for those who waver in their commitment to the great Sate," Bert pontificated.
"So what happens now?" I asked sarcastically. "What about us? Or should I assume that we're just two more minor inconveniences in your sordid little scenario?"
"Quite the contrary, Mr. Wages. Your stumbling in here like this is most fortuitous for you. Because you are an academic, you will have an opportunity to be a part of something that no other nonbeliever has ever been allowed to witness. You, perhaps more than all the others, will have some appreciation for what you are about to see. Your propensity for logic and your delight in the search for truth bids you well. As for my old colleague, Mr. Madden, he is not so fortunate. Our esteemed lawman, we fear, is not to be trusted. If we allow him to live much longer he could be disruptive to the proceedings."
"Yeah," Madden snarled. "Well, I think it's about time somebody put an end to this bullshit."
In the few short hours that I had known Jake Madden, he had proven to be a man of impulses. He acted on one now, but this one came at the wrong time and the wrong place. His hand darted for his .38, but it never cleared the holster. The unlikely-looking man with the unlikely-looking gun fired first, three times in succession.
The first shot caught Jake in the throat, the second in the chest, and the third blew away part of his craggy face as he plummeted backward. His body slammed against the wall of the cave, erupting geysers of thick black crimson. The series of violent explosions had punctuated the stillness, only to plunge us into an unreal, almost ghostly silence.
Angie watched in dispassionate silence. Bert did likewise. It was left up to me to experience the full range of terrifying emotions that accompany the witnessing of the violent and needless death of another human being. Tears welled up in my eyes, and my stomach revolted; I couldn't breathe. For a moment or two I thought I was going to suffocate. Then, gradually, all my chaotic emotions evolved into one — a realization that my own intellectual curiosity would be satiated only to suffer the same fate as Madden. I stared down at the twisted kaleidoscope of tissue and blood and hoped I had the strength to handle it like he did — no whimpers, no protest, no apology.
Finally, Johnson spoke. "Are you ready, Mr. Wages?"
I took one final look at the earthly remains of.lake Madden, still unable to cope with the helpless feeling of outrage. Through the pocket of my windbreaker I fingered the Mauser. One thought kept racing through my fevered mind: "Cool it." Madden was dead as the result of an irrational reaction. In that sense, I was one up on him. I was still alive, and if I wanted to stay that way, I had to have a plan. If I didn't, it could very well be that I wouldn't be around to make that final entry in the Wages Journal.
"Ready for what?" I managed, a little too surly.
"To witness what no other nonbeliever has been privileged to witness — the sabbat of the all-powerful, the rebirth of Sate." As Bert Johnson finished his invitation, his eyes drifted shut as though he had been transported into some kind of ethereal dimension.
It was only then that I realized that the man had shed his normal attire for a black, featureless, coarse robe with a simple single strand of gold rope at the collar. In the flickering light of the bank of torches, he looked pale and hollow, uncertain of his own destiny as well.
Angie stepped away from us as though she was in a trance. She moved around to the front and led the way.
"You will follow," Bert instructed. The ungainly pistol that had brought an abrupt and violent end to the life of Jake Madden was still clutched tightly in his hand.
Isolated fragments of a rapidly formulating plan for self-preservation were starting to materialize. I nonchalantly stooped over and picked up the backpack, hefted it over my left shoulder and started to follow.
The whole thing was ludicrous. I was moving through the bowels of the earth, blindly following a man and woman wearing the garb of an ancient satanic cult that believed their long dead lord and master was about to reawaken. The grotesque limestone formations gave the illusion of being in some kind of unreal stone and glass mortuary. Enormous stalactites stabbed down from a shimmering vaulted ceiling that looked like fragmented crystal. The floor was sporadically tortured with a similar outgrowth, this time up, raping the tunnel with an evil intent.
Angie, gliding along several feet in front of me, turned right and disappeared through a small opening.
No matter what I anticipated, regardless of what I had conjured up, everything paled in light of the spectacle that suddenly confronted me.
We had emerged into an enormous cavern, a magnificent hall bathed in the eerie orange-blue light of countless flaming torches. The natural grandeur of the place selected for Sate's reawakening was overwhelming. The ceiling was laced with a montage of stone and ice curtains, the walls were shimmering with chips of lime green and pale pink, and the granite floor in the center of the room was polished to a mirror-like smoothness by the ravages of the eons.
In the center of the enormous room was a natural stone altar; atop it sat a black, brooding sepulcher, the top half constructed of beveled glass and the bottom of a flat black depthless material that defied description.
The perimeter walls were sheer, nearly vertical, networked with a multitude of depressions. The creatures, the generals of Korbac, as Kelto had referred to them, languished like indescribable gargoyles waiting for the momentous event; their squinty, prehistoric burning yellow eyes were fixed on the centerpiece entombment.
"Behold the great Sate, Ancient of Ancients," Bert Johnson beatified.