Sentimental fool,laton said.

Listen, Father, after what I did today I’m entitled to show some sentiment,camilla retorted. Quinn would have ripped her apart. There’s no need for that kind of bloodshed any more. We have achieved what we set out to do.

Well, now this idiot priest is heading out to be a hero. Do you intend to save him as well?

No. He’s an adult. He makes his own choices.

Very well. The loss of Supervisor Manani is vexing, though. I was relying on him to eradicate the rest of the Ivets.

Do you want me to shoot them?

No, the hunting party is returning, they will find the horse soon enough, and the trail Quinn Dexter has left. They would wonder what killed them. There must be no hint of our existence. Though Jay—

Nobody will believe her.

Possibly.

So what are you going to do about Dexter? Our original scenario didn’t envisage him surviving this long.

Quinn Dexter will come to me now, there is nowhere else he can go. The sheriffs will assume he has run off into the wilderness, never to be seen again. Not quite the perfect solution, but no battle plan survives the opening shot. And Ann’s ova will be a welcome addition to our genetic resources.

Is my provocateur duty over now?

Yes, I don’t believe the situation requires further intervention on our part. We can monitor events through the servitor scouts.

Good. I’m on my way home; have a bath and a tall drink waiting, it’s been a long day.

Quinn looked down at Powel Manani. The naked supervisor had regained consciousness again now they had finished lashing his badly crushed legs to the mayope’s trunk. His head hung a few centimetres from the ground; cheeks puffed out from all the fluid that was building up in the facial tissue. They had spread his arms wide, tying his hands to small stakes in the ground. The inverted cross.

Powel Manani moaned dazedly.

Quinn held out his hands for silence. “The Night grows strong. Welcome to our world, Powel.”

“Dickhead,” Powel grunted.

Quinn flicked on a pocket-sized thermal inducer, and pressed it against Powel’s broken shin. He groaned, and jerked about feebly.

“Why did you do it, Powel? Why did you drown Leslie and Tony? Why did you kill Kay? Why did you send Vorix after Douglas?”

“And the others,” Powel wheezed. “Don’t forget them.”

Quinn stiffened. “Others?”

“You’re all that’s left, Quinn. And tomorrow there won’t even be you.”

The thermal inducer was applied to his leg again.

“Why?” Quinn asked.

“Carter McBride. Why do you think? You’re fucking animals, all of you. Just animals. No human could do that to another. He was ten years old!”

Quinn frowned, turning off the thermal inducer. “What happened to Carter McBride?”

“This! You dickhead. You strung him up, you and your Light Brother bastards. You split him in half!”

“Quinn?” Jackson Gael asked uncertainly.

Quinn gestured him quiet with a wave. “We never touched Carter. How could we? We were out at the Skibbow homestead.”

Powel pulled at the vines holding his hands. “And Gwyn Lawes, and Roger Chadwick, and the Hoffmans? What about them? You got alibis for them, too?”

“Ah, well now I have to admit, you have a point there. But how did you know we followed the Light Brother?”

“Elwes, he told us.”

“Yes, I should have realized a priest would know what was going down. Not that it matters now.” He took his fission blade from his dungarees pocket.

“Quinn,” Jackson said hotly. “This is weird, man. Who snuffed out Carter if we didn’t?”

Quinn held the blade up in front of his face, regarding it in a virtual trance. “What happened after Carter was found?”

“What do you mean?” Jackson yelled. “What are you talking about? Shit, Quinn, snap out of it, man. We’re gonna die if we don’t move.”

“That’s right. We’re gonna die. We’ve been set up.” The blade came alive, radiating a spectral yellow light that gave his face a phosphene hue. He smiled.

Jackson Gael felt a deadly frost settle around his heart. He hadn’t realized how insane Quinn was before this; nutty, sure, a psycho streak thrown in. But this—God’s Brother, Quinn was actually enjoying himself, he believed he was the Night’s disciple.

The other Ivets were giving each other very edgy glances.

Quinn didn’t notice. He leaned closer to Powel Manani. The supervisor sagged, giving up the struggle.

“We are the princes of the Night,” Quinn intoned.

“We are the princes of the Night,” the Ivets chanted with numb obedience.

Camilla, get back there now. Eliminate all of them immediately. I’m dispatching the incorporated to help you clear away the bodies. If the hunting party arrive first, use a thermal grenade to obliterate the scene. It’s hardly elegant, but it will have to suffice. Quinn Dexter must not be allowed to divulge our existence.

I’m on my way, Father.

The Ly-cilph moved its identity focus between Quinn Dexter and Powel Manani, extending its perception field around all the people in the cramped jungle clearing. It couldn’t quite read individual thoughts, not yet, the complexity of human synaptic discharges would take some time to unravel and catalogue, but their brains’ emotional content was plain enough.

The emotional polarity between Quinn Dexter and Powel Manani was enormous; one triumphant and elated, life loving; the other defeated and withdrawn, willing death to come quickly. It mirrored their religious traits, the diametric opposition.

Right out on the fringe of awareness, the Ly-cilph could detect a minute transmission of energy from Powel Manani into Quinn Dexter. It came from the basic energistic force which pervaded every living cell. This kind of transference was extraordinarily rare in corporeal entities. And Quinn Dexter seemed to be aware of it at some fundamental level, he possessed an energistic sense far superior to that of the priest. To Quinn Dexter the black mass sacrifices were a lot more than an empty ritual of worship, they generated a weighty expectation in his mind, confirming his belief. The Ly-cilph watched the sensation growing inside him, and waited with every perceptive faculty extended eagerly to record the phenomenon.

“When the false lord leads his legions away into oblivion, we will be here,” Quinn said.

“We will be here,” the Ivets repeated.

“When You bring light into the darkness, we will be here.”

“We will be here.”

“When time ends, and space collapses into itself, we will be here.”

“We will be here.”

Quinn reached out with the fission blade. He pushed the tip into Powel Manani’s groin, just above the root of his penis. Skin sizzled as the blade sank in, pubic hair singed and shrivelled. Powel clenched his teeth, neck muscles bulging out like ropes as he struggled against the scream. Quinn began to saw the blade down through the supervisor’s abdomen.

“This is our sacrament to You, Lord,” Quinn said. “We have freed our serpents, we are the beast we were made. We are real. Accept this life as a token of our love and devotion.” The knife reached Powel’s navel, ribbons of blood were pouring out of the wound. Quinn watched the scarlet liquid mat the man’s thick body hair, experiencing a fierce delight. “Give us Your strength, Lord, help us defeat Your enemies.” The dark joy of the serpent beast had never been so good before; he felt intoxicated. Every cell in his body vibrated with euphoria. “Show us, Lord!” he cried. “Speak to us!”

Powel Manani was dying. The Ly-cilph observed the swirl of energistic patterns raging throughout his body. A small discharge crackled into Quinn, where it was hungrily absorbed, raising the Ivet’s mental rapture to greater heights. The remainder of Powel’s life energy dwindled, but its dissipation wasn’t entirely entropic, a minute fraction flowed away through some kind of arcane dimensional twist. The Ly-cilph was fascinated, this ceremony was releasing an incredible wealth of knowledge; it had never attuned itself to an entity’s death so pervasively before in all its terrible length of being.