Death of an Adept

The black priest donning black vestments as Angela lifted the skirts of her habit to squat down and urinate over the aspersing bowl, which the priest then used to pollute the altar and unbless the most unwilling victims set helplessly before it….

There followed an obscene parody of an ecclesiastical procession up and down the chapel, led by the thurifer and fresh clouds of noxious smoke. Raeburn followed in his wake, brandishing aloft a staff of alder-wood from which a crucifix hung by the heels, in blasphemous mockery of all the holy symbol stood for.

Two of Raeburn's black-robed subordinates came next, each bearing one of the iron candlesticks, squat black candles now alight. Barclay, Mallory, and Angela followed, preceding the black priest, who sprinkled urine left and right and led a dissonant litany in some unknown tongue, whose rhythms sent chills up Adam's spine.

By the time the band had reassembled before the altar, the incense smoke had settled to a noxious and vaguely visible carpet of mist that lay uncannily across the entire expanse of the chapel floor. Adam stifled a gasp as tendrils of that smoke snaked softly upward to lick at his bare ankles, but he could not summon the will to shift his feet. It was hard enough merely to remain sitting upright, all too aware that to overbalance and fall off his chair would be to expose his entire body to whatever animated the smoke.

"In nomine Magni Dei Nostri Satanas, introibo ad altare Domini Inferi," the black priest intoned, moving behind the altar, his words snapping Adam's attention back to even more immediate concerns as he began the sequence of the Black Mass.

"Ad eum qui laetificat meum,'' came the response of Raeburn and his associates.

"Adjutorium nostrum in nomine Domini Inferi."

"Out regit terram…"

"Confiteor coram Principe Tenebrarum, Domino Satanas… "

The perverted introit gave way to a Satanic confession of faith, praising the depravities of Darkness and importuning the intercession of ancient Evil, the corrupted Latin phrases echoing within the invisible confines of the ruined chapel. Closing his eyes, Adam tried to close his ears as well, retreating to his mantra of psalmody; but discordant fragments of the black priest's words kept breaking in on his concentration like shards of broken glass piercing vulnerable flesh.

The growing pain of it stretched him to the brink of crying out, but he set his teeth in stubborn denial, knowing that any vocal expression from him would be tantamount to participation, praying for the strength not to be swept away by the encroaching darkness. The ending of the collects brought relief of a sort - but only until someone brushed roughly past him, jarring him back to urgent awareness and the discovery that the dark ritual was moving forward.

They had come to take lolo McFarlane. Opening his eyes, Adam saw Mallory and one of Raeburn's acolytes jerk the young Druid to his feet and hustle him, unresisting, over to the front of the altar. Raeburn was there already, kneeling down with the second bag of Adam's blood to trace a large triangle on the ground. Already drawn were two sides of a second, even larger triangle, scaled to define perhaps a two-foot border between the two.

After finishing the inner triangle, tracing it a second time to be sure there were no gaps, Raeburn handed off the bag to Mallory, who was standing by with the glassy-eyed lolo. As Raeburn rose, he pulled lolo to him, so that they both were standing in the open side of the outer triangle, facing the smaller one inside. Then, from the bosom of his robe, Raeburn produced an ancient and evil-looking dagger.

Its design proclaimed it to be the product of Pictish workmanship. Its aspect proclaimed it an object of power. As Adam gazed at it, he found himself suddenly remembering the tore which Raeburn's superior, the Head-Master, had worn at the height of his power, and knew the blade to be of kindred crafting and potency.

Raeburn, for the moment, was unmindful of anything outside his own intentions. With one arm braced around the shoulders of the oblivious lolo and the other directing the focus of his will into the dagger in his hand, he embarked upon a new chant. In contrast to the voice of the black priest, Raeburn's was deep and sibilant, a voice of subtle entrapment that ended on a note of command as he thrust the point of the dagger toward the heart of the inner triangle.