Death of an Adept

The chapel's interior was open to the sky, its ruined walls conveying the impression more of a paddock than a building. Snow lay heavy within, piled in drifts against the side walls downwind, but the area around the shattered altar in the eastern end had been shovelled clear, and a series of white-painted plywood sheets had been erected along the chapel's northern side, to further screen the inside from the road.

Adam was reeling by the time his handlers dragged him over to a clean-shovelled spot to the right of the altar, where one of Richter's white-clad underlings was shaking out a thick white blanket beside a pair of folding chairs. The blanket was a welcome weight around his shoulders as he was wrapped in it and lowered to sit on one of the chairs, Mallory remaining with one hand set solicitously on his shoulder. It was all that kept Adam upright. He drifted for a little while, huddled and shivering, until awareness of movement nearer the altar brought him back to remembrance of his peril.

They were preparing for the unholy work to come. The altar was largely ruined, but two of Raeburn's men had lifted several broken slabs back into place to form a roughly horizontal surface, and were draping the altar with a heavy cloth of black velvet. Another man brought two heavy wrought-iron candlesticks, as tall as a man.

From a capacious duffel bag came a battered wooden crucifix, a brass thurible and incense boat, and a massive chalice of tarnished bronze with matching paten. These Angela arranged on the altar, while a cohort shook out a set of Satanic vestments - black wool faced with scarlet silk, emblazoned front and back with a blood-red inverted cross.

These, too, were laid out in readiness, along with the bags of Adam's blood, an aspersing pot, and an aspergillum made from black goat's hair. The totality of this assemblage of paraphernalia left no doubt in Adam's fuddled mind that Raeburn intended to extract every iota of anticipation from his intended victim, who could not fail to recognize the trappings required for the promised Black Mass.

The soft, whistling chuffle of a helicopter descending beyond the ruins behind Adam heralded the arrival of Raeburn himself shortly thereafter, wearing a cowled black robe and the silver medallion which betokened his status as Lynx-Master. He gave Adam a steely-eyed nod as he entered the chapel accompanied by Barclay, also robed, and a tall, gaunt stranger with furtive, darting eyes - by his Roman collar and greasy black soutane, surely the requisite defrocked priest required for the night's undertakings.

Behind the priest came two more anonymous henchmen supporting another drugged and drooping figure between them, white-robed and barefooted like Adam, bowed head lolling forward on his chest. When Mallory had spread a second blanket on the chair beside Adam, the two deposited their charge and supported him while Mallory turned the newcomer's face upward to shine his pocket torch in the other's eyes.

Adam had a brief, dazed impression of glassy eyes, drooping moustaches, and thick braids falling to either side of the slack face. Memory supplied a name, previously attached only to photos: the missing lolo McFarlane. As Adam himself came briefly under Mallory's scrutiny, he found himself almost envying the young Druid, for it occurred to him that before too much longer, he might well wish to be equally insensible of what was happening around him.

The prospect became more probable as Mallory's place was taken by Raeburn, who smiled coldly as he produced a lynx medallion, near-mate to the one he was wearing, and reached out with both hands to slip the chain over Adam's head. The medallion felt heavier than stone where it fell on Adam's chest, and seemed to reverse some of the recovery he had made in the past hour, dragging him into renewed lethargy, setting him drifting….

Somewhere in the vicinity of Peebles, some twenty miles due south of Edinburgh, the ringing of McLeod's portable phone made itself barely heard above the mechanical roar of the chopper's powerful rotor-blades. Thumbing the On switch, McLeod jammed the instrument to his ear as Peregrine and Ximena leaned closer from adjacent seats. The red cabin illumination lent an infernal cast to their taut faces.

"McLeod."

"Noel, they think Raeburn may have gotten wherever he's going,'' Julia informed him excitedly through snaps and crackles of static. "Sir Gordon says you're to head straight for Gal-ashiels, then drop due south toward Hawick. Hand me to Peregrine while you're relaying that, and I'll give him exact map coordinates."

"Right."