He sighed.
His face was a study in solemnity.
“Friends, I ask you-are you willing to pay the ultimate price for the chance to be free again?”
The cheer this time was a roar of affirmation.
Lazarus, whose big voice critics had once ascribed god-like qualities to, bellowed loud enough to be heard above the crowd: “THEN FREE YOU SHALL BE!”
This time the crowd’s response was like a battle cry.
Fierce and determined, a voice of collective yearning.
Chad realized he was shaking again.
But it wasn’t fear causing the trembling.
It was battle fever.
The machete’s handle thrummed in his hand.
And then hands were on his back, urging him to the side of the stage-toward the stairs.
Toward the transport truck.
Toward, yes, destiny.
The Master emerged from the meditative trance he entered when he wanted to commune with the gods. For centuries this had been an effortless process, a thing he did with the unthinking ease of an opera maestro going through vocal warm-ups.
That had changed.
Oh, he could still enter the meditative state instantly, but what was different now was his relationship with the death spirits. Often they seemed reluctant to commune with him. There had been times in recent weeks when he’d feared they didn’t wish to communicate with him at all. He was afraid they were abandoning him, a possibility with ominous implications.
The gods were enamored of power. They fed on people, places, and things that were suffused with energy. The death spirits, his gods, loved dictators, the military-industrial complex, politicians, corporations bent on circumventing EPA rules, and the more prolific serial killers. They derived energy from the dark deeds of their hosts. He’d fed them well for most of a millennium. The swath of terror he’d cut through this world was impressive by any standard. His numbers didn’t quite match those produced by human genocides, but those were intensely concentrated outbursts of brutality that burned out after a few years. His strength was implacability, a steady slaughter maintained throughout the ages.
He was the death spirits’ most loyal servant.
And what was his reward?
Silence.
Hateful, maddening, terrifying silence. He alternately raged and despaired into the void as he beseeched the beings he’d once almost considered equals. Now they seemed unreachable. Uncaring. He knew the reason for their retreat, an awful truth he could no longer avoid. He’d been weakening for years. Perhaps even for decades. He had more than a hundred years remaining in his natural life cycle, but he suspected they would not be good years. The time left to him might well be a grim slide into senility and dementia. The illusions created by his power might morph beyond his ability to control, perhaps even become dangerous to him. The prospect of a descent into the indignity of advanced age and madness was more than he could bear.
These were the reasons the human woman’s dark invitation tempted him so. A premature ascendancy to paradise seemed infinitely preferable to a steady, sure decline on this wretched plane. It was the notion of time’s relentless progress-and the ravages it might wreak upon him-that decided him.
He wanted to die with Dream.
She was evolved so far beyond the rest of her race that he wondered whether she was really human at all. He theorized a sexual coupling between one of Dream’s long-ago ancestors and another of his own kind, a union resulting in a kind of human/Master hybrid. The important genes, the ones encoded with his kind’s power, remained dormant for reasons he couldn’t fathom. But there they lurked, awaiting discovery. No other possibility seemed feasible. He’d assumed genetic differences rendered conception between the species an impossibility, but he’d never put this to the test.
He tended to kill the women with whom he copulated.
He regretted that now.
He wished he’d met Dream-or at least a woman very much like Dream-hundreds of years earlier. A life spent in the company of such a creature would have been fascinating. He envisioned lost generations of babies. Human/Master babies. A family. A kingdom ruled by others of his own kind.
He grimaced at the cloak of melancholy that enveloped him.
He would have no family on this plane.
But he would have eternity with Dream.
He knew this because, after a silence of days, he’d finally established contact with one of the death spirits. Loth, one of the lesser death gods. It scarcely mattered that he was still being ignored by the supreme spirits of that realm. Any contact at all by this point was cause for rejoicing.
You wish to die? Loth asked him.
Yes.
And you expect passage to the plane of your choice?
Yes.
There was a pause as the god considered it.
You have served us well through time. We can do this for you. However, we desire a final sacrifice in exchange. Might you have something suitable in mind?
The Master didn’t hesitate.
The people of Below.
Loth, who resembled a bloated gargoyle in The Master’s mind, seemed almost to smile.
Why, yes, that is acceptable.
However, should you fail to deliver the banished people unto us, you will find yourself transported to a realm bearing no resemblance at all to the paradise you seek.
I will not fail.
And then Loth was gone.
The Master never sensed the rumble of revolution Below.
What remained of his powers was concentrated elsewhere.
And he had preparations to begin.
Alicia woke to pain like nothing she’d ever known. Her body was awash in it. Hundreds of little razor nicks dotted her flesh. That bitch had done this to her. That awful hag had done this unspeakable thing to her. Cutting and cutting her with the dispassionate manner of one slicing roast beef. And then pouring things into the wounds. Making her scream and thrash against her bonds. All while poor Karen was made to watch from the floor while that other apprentice stood over her with the gleaming broadax.
Karen.
Shit, she didn’t want to think about Karen.
But she was powerless against the hideous memories. They unreeled in her head like scenes from a depraved snuff film. She saw again what the shapeshifter did to her on the floor. Violating her. Then she saw what the broadax did. The blood. She saw that over and over.
Alicia cried.
The worst thing of all, the knowledge she wanted to somehow excise and cast forever out of her brain, was the memory of her own role in Karen’s death. That memory she just couldn’t abide. It made her want to die.
Which was ironic, since it was her own inability to endure pain and torture that had doomed her friend.
She saw Ms. Wickman’s leering face in her mind. Heard her asking, “Would you like a little more perfume in your wounds, dear?”
“NO!” A shriek.
“Just a little?”
“NO!”
“Not even to spare your friend a little pain?”
A long pause punctuated by her own whimpers.
Ms. Wickman tipped the little bottle toward one of the fresher razor nicks.
Alicia screamed.
A sound Ms. Wickman mocked.
She seized a handful of Alicia’s hair. “Answer me.”
Alicia was sobbing again by this point. “N-no …”
The utterance made her feel pitiful, pathetic, like a coward.
Ms. Wickman set the perfume bottle on the nightstand and retrieved the straight razor. She smiled as she unfolded it. “And this?” She held up the shiny, blood-flecked blade for Alicia to see. “Would you like another taste of this?”