Almost halfway there, Hawk found two of the guard dogs. They were lying stretched out on the grass, still and silent, two darker shadows in the gloom. Hawk knelt down beside them, and pushed one gently with his fingertips. The body rolled slightly back and forth, and then was still again. Both dogs were dead. He checked them over quickly, but there was no sign of any wound, no trace to show what had killed them. It was as though they'd just lay down where they were, and the life went out of them.
"Captain Fisher," said Buchan quietly. "Do you still have your suppressor stone?"
"Sure," said Fisher. "Why?"
"Activate it. Now. And you and Captain Hawk had better stay close together. That way, the stone will protect you both from any general magic in the area."
"What about you?" said Hawk.
"I have my own stone," said Buchan. "Now let's get moving. Something bad has happened at the Hall, and I have a horrible feeling we've got here too late to stop it."
He and Fisher muttered over their suppressor stones, and then the three of them moved warily forward into the darkness, their eyes fixed on the Hall. There was still no sign of any movement at the brightly blazing windows. Hawk was the first to reach the front door. It was open, standing slightly ajar. Hawk pushed at it with his foot. The door moved back a way, and then stopped as it hit an obstruction. Hawk eased himself through the narrow gap and looked down to see what was blocking the door. As he'd expected, it was a body: one of the men-at-arms. Hawk knelt down and checked quickly for vital signs. The man-at-arms was alive, but only just. His skin was cold and deathly pale, his pulse slow, and his breathing disturbingly shallow. Hawk straightened up and looked along the hallway. More men-at-arms lay scattered and unmoving the length of the entrance hall. Hawk squeezed through the doorway, followed by Fisher and Buchan.
"There was an emergency," said Buchan quietly. "Someone called for help. The men-at-arms came running, from the house and from the grounds. This was as far as they got. Whatever the Hellfire Club has called up, it didn't want to be disturbed."
"But how could they have called up something?" said Fisher. "They were a bunch of amateurs; you said so yourself."
"They must have had help."
Hawk frowned. "What kind of help?"
"Good question," said Buchan. "Let's go and find out."
He took the lead, and guided Hawk and Fisher unerringly through the maze of corridors that led to the ballroom. The silence was complete, broken only by their own soft footsteps. They found servants here and there, lying crumpled where they fell, struck down by the same deathly sleep. Hawk peered continuously about him, skin crawling in anticipation of the attack that never came, his tiredness burned away by rising adrenalin.
They finally came to the closed double doors that led to the ballroom. Buchan made as though to push the doors open and walk straight in, but Hawk stopped him with a cautious hand on his arm. He looked warily around him, then stepped forward, and pressed his ear against the right-hand door. He couldn't hear anything. Either the wood was too thick, or there wasn't anything to hear. Taking hold of both door-handles, he very carefully eased the doors open an inch or two and then stepped back. He made sure his grip on his axe was secure, looked quickly at Fisher and Buchan, then stepped forward and kicked the doors open. The three of them surged forward to fill the doorway, weapons at the ready.
The Quality lay strewn across the waxed and polished floor of the ballroom in their brightly colored finery, like so many broken butterflies. They lay singly or in heaps, wherever they'd been standing when the magic struck them down. Most were awake but unable to move. Some were moaning quietly, as much in horror as in pain. All of them looked withered and ancient, aged long beyond their years, held somehow on the very edge of death as their life drained slowly out of them. Those nearest the blue chalk circle looked almost mummified. And there, in the middle of the ballroom, inside the blue circle, stood the thing the Hellfire Club had called up out of the Gulfs. It looked across at the doorway, and smiled charmingly.
"Well, now," it said in a soft, pleasant voice. "Visitors. How nice."
The figure was six feet tall, quite naked, and aesthetically muscular in a way usually achieved only by statues. Its face was classically handsome and unmarked by time, so flawlessly perfect as to be almost inhuman. A raw sensuality burned around it like an invisible flame attractive and repellent in its uncaring arrogance, like bitter honey or the smell of an open wound masked by perfume. It was the perfect embodiment of the male form, burning with ruthless vitality.
"What's wrong with the Quality?" said Fisher softly. "What's happened to them?"
"The creature they called up is draining the life right out of them," said Buchan. "Their deaths will make it even more powerful. Even a low-level sorcerer would have known to set wards so this couldn't happen, but these people were amateurs, and they didn't know. At least they had enough sense to draw a restraining circle. That should hold it for a while."
"How long?" said Hawk, not taking his gaze from the figure before him.
"Only as long as it takes to drain its summoners dry," said Buchan. "After that, it'll be powerful enough to break the circle, and there'll be nothing we can do to stop it."
"What about the Exorcist Stone?" said Fisher.
Buchan smiled tiredly. "The creature will be gone long before we could get the Stone here, and all the Quality will be dead."
"Great," said Hawk. "Just great." He moved slowly forward, stopping right at the edge of the chalk circle. The creature watched him intently, still smiling its perfect smile. Hawk looked into its dark unblinking eyes and saw no humor there, or any other emotion he could recognize. "Who are you?" he said harshly. "What are you?"
"I'm what they wanted," said the thing in the circle. "I'm all the darkness in their souls, all their hidden hates and wants and desires set free at last, given shape and form and substance, in me. I'm strong and beautiful and perfect because that's what they wanted me to be. Or perhaps because that's how they see themselves, in the privacy of their mind's eye. It really doesn't matter. They gave me life, whether they meant to or not, and they'll go on giving me life until they die. Then, when I have fully come into my power, I'll leave them here and go out into the city. A new Being, in all his glory. A new God for the Street of Gods. And men shall worship me as they always have, under one name or another, in blood and suffering and all the hidden darkness of their souls. I shall be very happy here. This city was built with me in mind."
"I've met your kind before," said Hawk. "You're just another Dark Man with delusions of grandeur, that's all."
"I shall show you blood and horror," said the creature pleasantly. "I will break your body and your spirit, and you will praise me before I let you die. You don't understand what I am. What I really am. I'm everything that ever scared you, every dark impulse you tried to hide, your worst nightmare given flesh and blood and bone."
"You're also stuck in that circle," said Fisher, moving forward to stand beside Hawk. "And if you had any power to use against us, you'd have used it by now. You're not leaving this circle. You're not going anywhere. We'll see to that."
"So brave," said the creature. "And so foolish. You are nothing compared to me."
Fisher grinned. "Fancies himself, doesn't he? Let's see how he likes half a yard of cold steel rammed through his appendix."
"No!" said Buchan, moving quickly forward to join the two Guards at the edge of the circle. "Don't try it. Captain. You can't reach the thing from outside the circle, and once you cross the chalk line your suppressor stone wouldn't be able to protect you anymore. The creature would drain you dry just like the Quality."