As they were trying to figure out some sort of plan, almost incredibly one of the doors opened and two figures stepped out, talking angrily. One was dressed in the reds of the computer technicians, but the other was dressed from head to toe entirely in black, including a black mask covering his entire face. His voice gave the last clue.
“Some people are going to wish they were dead before this is over,” growled the Dark Man, without his eerie electronic protection.
They didn’t hesitate. Almost at the point where the pair saw that they were not alone, both MacDonald and Shadrach opened fire. The force of the machine gun blasts cut through both men, knocking them back against the wall. The two invaders approached the door and the two limp forms carefully, but the door remained open. The Sikh, again, led the way, and as he approached the Dark Man he frowned. “No blood,” he said. “The other is covered in blood…”
He stooped down, carefully, reaching out to remove the mask. The Dark Man did not bleed, but his black uniform was riddled with holes.
Suddenly the black-clad figure reached out with lightning speed, pushing at the Sikh and throwing him into the air as if he were a child’s toy. MacDonald pulled the trigger on his weapon, but it wouldn’t fire. The Dark Man was on his feet now, and chuckling softly.
Although he would have sworn he’d never actually use it up to a moment before, he found himself popping a poison pill into his mouth and crushing it between his teeth.
“I hope you like licorice,” the Dark Man said, sounding vastly amused. “It is not only appropriate, it is the first flavor that popped into my mind.”
The sweet, distinctive taste in his mouth left no doubt that the pill was not as advertised, but MacDonald did not feel relieved.
Suddenly the Sikh gave a terrible cry in his own tongue and leaped from a desk straight at the Dark Man.
“Go to your God, Sikh!” said the inhuman man, and sparks flew from his gloved hands and enveloped Shad in mid-air. He shimmered and disappeared, leaving not a trace of himself or his weapon to fall to the floor.
MacDonald took advantage of the distraction to hurl himself forward onto the Dark Man, knocking him down on the floor. Caught off-balance and unaware, the black clad man fell and was partly pinned by MacDonald, who was working in one fluid motion. He reached up and grabbed the tight black stocking mask over the face and yanked hard enough to pull it completely off.
Greg MacDonald screamed, then got quickly up and backed away from the Dark Man, who was slowly getting to his feet.
It was a horrible face, beyond a dead man’s face, the face of one who had laid in the ground far too long. Much of the skull was showing, and what skin remained was peeling and flaking in rotten bloated masses. One lidless eye was hanging, partly out of its socket, the other in, huge, bloodshot, and staring. Unkempt hair grew where skin still adhered to skull, and it was matted and mixed in with the rotting flesh. There was suddenly a stench in the room, a stench of meat left too long in the sun.
It was an impossible face, a face that held a grim, fixed expression and one that was such a horror that he could not bear to look at it, although he couldn’t bear to turn away.
“I told you I didn’t wear this mask to hide my identity,” said the Dark Man through rotting lips. “It disturbs some people to look upon it.”
“Noooo…!” MacDonald screamed. “You can’t be! You can’t exist! You belong in the grave!”
“Others agree, but after tonight the power will lie elsewhere anyway. I see my face has a strong effect on you. Would you like one just like it? You might have problems getting kissed after that…”
“That’s quite enough, Geoffrey,” said a calm British voice behind MacDonald. “You have quite enough to do and time is running out. It’s past eleven, you know.”
MacDonald turned, thankful to have a reason to tear his gaze away from that horrible thing, and saw Sir Reginald Truscott-Smythe standing behind him with a quick-firing scatter gun much like the one the Dark Man had wielded in the motel room.
“The others?” the Dark Man asked.
“We killed the two upstairs, although they took a frightful toll, and they apparently planted bombs along the antenna array. Four are knocked out and the other three are off kilter. W’re off the air right now, but we should be able to jury-rig something in three or four hours at worst.”
The Dark Man reached down, found his mask, and fitted it back over his terrible head. “Very well. I hesitate to leave MacDonald here, though. He is a most resourceful man.”
“You’ve deactivated all his weaponry and explosives?”
“Of course. Tell you what—sit down, MacDonald, in that chair over there.”
MacDonald sighed and did as instructed. With everything else blown so far, he had to cling to the fact that they hadn’t found them all yet, and they still had a big shock coming.
The Dark Man came over and touched a point on his neck. He felt a coldness, like a dagger of ice, go in, and when the creature’s finger was withdrawn he had no feeling, no control or sense of movement below the neck.
“Geoffrey—it’s eleven twenty,” Sir Reginald said nervously.
Ten minutes, MacDonald thought anxiously. Just ten more minutes …
“All right—I’ll go. Have a nice chat, if you wish. I’m sure that Mr. MacDonald can be brought around to our point of view, one way or the other, at our leisure. He would be a wonderful replacement for Ross. Treat him well. After all, he is married to our Angelique…”
With that, the Dark Man vanished, this time by walking back through the door.
Sir Reginald put down the pistol and took a seat himself. He looked both nervous and very, very tired.
“Reggie—what is that thing? You called him Geoffrey.”
“He’s my brother,” the computer genius responded.
“Your brother hanged himself almost nine years ago.”
“Yes, yes. I know. Oh, god! I’m so tired and sick of all this mess!”
MacDonald frowned, recovering a bit from the Dark Man’s visage although it was never far from his mind. “Hey— aren’t you the one behind all this?”
“Well, yes, in a way I suppose. You see, I was working up at Cheltenham on the defense computer system at the time. Geoff had been dead about a year, and until those books arrived I’d quite forgotten about it all.”
“Then you weren’t in any cult?”
“No, I had little use for such stuff, then or now, I’m afraid. But, you see, shortly after the books arrived, I went down for a visit to Geoff’s grave. I’d put it off—it’s a silly custom—but when the books came I thought about him and just decided to go. I was there, at the grave, which had already been seeded with grass and overgrown, when I noticed some odd symbols at the bottom of the headstone. I kneeled down to get a better look and—” his voice trembled and broke rather suddenly”—these two arms, these strong, terrible arms reached up from the grave had held me. I—I screamed, broke free, and ran, but he followed me, somehow. He was there, outside the windows of my house, in the shadows even in the high security area at Cheltenham and I couldn’t do anything. I thought I was losing my mind. Finally I confronted him, and he told me what he wanted me to do.”
“Eight years… Then he couldn’t be a creation of SAINT.”