Adramelech twisted and shuddered uneasily. “It’s a fake,” he said, in a harsh voice. “All relics are fakes.”
I felt frozen with fear. But I kept the tin held aloft, and I repeated, as steadily as I could: “It is the ashes of Christ’s robe, and it is not a fake. Christ lived, and these are the remnants of his robe to prove it.”
“You lie!” shrieked Adramelech. “Take that thing away!”
“It’s the truth!” I yelled back. “Christ must have lived because nobody in the whole goddamned universe could have tolerated a world where you and your devils ruled alone! Christ’s life was logical, as well as divine, and that’s all there is to it!”
“You lie!” fumed the demon. “You lie!”
“Do I?” I shouted back. Then take this!” I raised my arm, and hurled the tin of ashes over the serpentine body of the grand Chancellor of Hell in a powdery spray.
There was a second in which I thought that nothing was going to happen, and that the demon was going to attack me with those rows and rows of vicious teeth. But then Adramelech bellowed, so loudly that bricks and dust collapsed from the basement ceiling in thunderous showers, and bellowed again, and again, until I had to cover my ears.
His black snake-like skin sloughed off him in heavy, wrinkled folds. Beneath that, he was all raw glistening flesh—greys and yellows and purple veins. Then his flesh began to slither away from his bones, and evaporate into sickening, stomach-turning steam. Finally, his bones dropped to the floor, and out from his ribs crawled a twitching iridescent slug creature that subsided on to the concrete and shrivelled into nothing.
For a long time, I stood there staring at Adramelech’s remains, and couldn’t speak. It was hardly possible to believe what had happened. Then I turned back towards the dark glow of the angel Hod, and I said: “Is that it? Is Adramelech really dead?”
Madeleine’s voice said, “In this life, yes. We have much to thank you for, mortal. You have acted wisely.”
I wiped dust and dirt from my face. “What about Madeleine?” I asked the angel. “Is she going to come back? Or do you have her for ever?”
The blackness gleamed. “Madeleine is gone now, mortal, just as Charlotte Latour did before her. She is not dead, but will live in another form. Perhaps one day you will meet her again.”
I coughed. The air in the basement was dusty and stifling. I said, “What does that mean? She’s going to be reborn?”
“In a way.”
“Can you tell her something for me?”
“I’m afraid not. She will know nothing of what went before. But she will be happy. I hope that is some consolation for you. She has served us well, and deserves happiness.”
I wiped my face with my handkerchief. “And what about Father Anton, and Antoinette? Elmek promised that Adramelech would revive them.”
If such a thing was possible, the blackness smiled. Or at least, it radiated affection. It said: “The promises of devils are rarely kept. Only the Lord thy God has the final power of life or resurrection. But you may know that Father Anton is in his heaven—where he deserves to be—and that his Antoinette is with him. Those who struggle against evil are rewarded in the life hereafter.”
I was beginning to feel very tired. It was a long, long time ago since those two old men had come down the road on bicycles and interrupted my map-making to tell me about the tank at Pont D’Ouilly.
I said, “What about the devils? Are we ever going to see them again?”
“As long as man makes wars, Adramelech and his thirteen acolytes will survive, in one form or another. A demon of the evil sephiroth cannot be totally destroyed, except by disbelief. The same is true for angels of the divine sephiroth. If no man believed in glory, which is my realm, then I should vanish for all eternity.”
“I see,” I told the angel, although I wasn’t sure that I did. I looked round at the ruined basement, and said, “What do I do now? Is there anything else you want me to do?”
There was no answer. I turned around, and the black glow had disappeared. I was alone again in the world of mortals.
Very wearily, very slowly, I climbed the cellar steps, and opened the door that led out into the hallway. There was nobody around. Up here, the building looked as ordinary and normal as when we had first pushed the doorbell. The front door was open, too, and I could see my rented Citröen parked outside, with a parking ticket tucked under the windshield wiper.
I went down the steps into the wintry street. It was almost dark now, and it was beginning to snow. I lifted up my wiper and took out the ticket, and as I stood there on that wet, cold London pavement, I was glad of the icy drizzle, because nobody could see that my eyes were filled with tears.