Skull Moon

Claussen grabbed Perry violently by the arm. "You shall not revere the names of false gods in this holy place."

"Fantasy…"

"Really?"

"Yes, I…"

Claussen cackled with laughter. "Behold," he said, "he stands at the door and knocks."

The stink had grown omnipotent now.

It dried the words on Perry's tongue, put a frost on his bones. And then, behind him, as his senses reeled with nausea, movement. Perry turned, his back wrenching and crying out. He ignored it for the Lord of the High Wood had arrived. The doctor looked on the beast with no reverence, no respect, only a sort of numbing awe at this mistake of evolution. It was huge, its shoulders twice the breadth of any man's, its head mammoth. A giant. Its gray flesh was stained with dried blood and those eyes…good God, those eyes…bleeding balls that ran with discolored tears.

Tears?

Yes.

Jesus wept.

The beast came closer, moving with a slow grace that was frightening for something its size. Its arms hung limp at its sides, matted with patchy fur, bulging with obscene muscularity, the fingers-impossibly long-ending in hooked claws. Rapiers. Its sex swung with pendulum strokes between the massive thighs proudly. Its skin was ruptured, torn, splitting open with a vile sap in a hundred places. But its eyes, these are what held Perry. And the mouth, the sneering, hateful mouth that opened with a wet smack exposing teeth that glimmered like sacrificial daggers.

"Jesus," Perry managed.

"Not Jesus," Claussen said, stepping between them. "The Lord has chased Jesus from this place on the cowering tails of the saints."

Claussen looked up at his god and made a quick benediction. The beast roared and with a single slap of its bleeding fist sent the reverend sailing over a row of pews.

Perry pulled his gun. "We'll see what kind of god you are."

The beast began to drool.

21

Skullhead stood on the altar, having finished with the old man and his little gun. He didn't bother snacking on this one-he was far too old, far too tough and meatless. No, the old ones served only one purpose and had for ages and that was to be broken by the will of the Lords, killed for amusement. This was all. Murdering the old was tradition amongst the Lords. The dark-skins held the aged in such reverence that these were the first the Lords had killed when they waged war on the little men. After that, the men. Women and children were a different matter.

Skullhead sat down on the altar, fatigued with all the excitement and bloodshed. He was hurting. Pain rolled through his great torso in sharp waves. Bullets. Too many bullets in him. But the agony was good. Often, in the old days, the Lords would cut and slash themselves to bring on pain before a battle. It made them fiercer, more savage fighters. But this pain…though it made him angry, a sadistic conqueror…was not good. There was simply too much of it. It clouded the mind and made the senses reel.

It had to be alleviated.

When the Lords fought the wars against the advancing dark-skins in those ancient, forgotten times, the dark-skins used arrows and spears. Both of these were far more painful than mere bullets-they opened great gaping wounds in the body. Once they were removed, the healing began and went quickly as was the way with the Lords' biology. But sometimes arrowheads broke off inside the flesh and had to be dug out by claws or teeth. If they weren't, the body would fester and rot and death would follow. Skullhead knew the tales of those old days, they boiled in his cells. He knew the bullets had to be removed.

But it was no easy task.

His flesh, usually as tough as a beetle's carapace, was sensitive and hurting from all the abuse it had taken. Still, it had to be done. Groaning, the last of the Lords of the High Wood began to dig the slugs free. Bloody, mangled and mushroomed bullets dropped to his feet. Many were near the surface, others were deeper. He worked his long bony fingers into his belly, searching and sorting through his internals. One by one, the slugs were removed. With a surgeon's finesse, he groped and probed and stroked the secrets of his anatomy.

It was some time before he'd finished.

He removed nearly twenty bullets and there were still four or five left. He didn't think they'd do any harm. There were other foreign bodies lodged in him, tokens of battles centuries gone, and they caused him no harm.

Lying back on the altar, he rested.