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A MELLOW and co voice spoke to me, directly tobut ashes reive him, that he used his sublime powers not in the service of God but in the service of the World, the Flesh and the Devil, yes, I say the Devil, though the Devil is our standard bearer, for the Evil One is proud of us and satisfied with our pain; but Marius served the Devil with no regard to the wishes of God, and the ranted us by God, that rather than burn in the flames of Hell, we rule in the shadows of the Earth"

"Ah," I whispered "I see your twisted philosophy"

There cah I had rather hear only the voice, an to focus There were human skulls, bleached and covered with dust, pressed in the domed earth over my head Skulls pressed into the earth with , like clean white shells froht, for what is left of them, as they protrude from the mortared soil behind them, but the dome that covers the brain and the round black holes where once the jellied eyes were poised, acute as dancers, ever vigilant to report the splendors of the world to the carapaced mind

All skulls, a dome of skulls, and where the doh bones all around it, and below that the rando no pattern, any more than random stones do when they are similarly pressed in mortar to hted with candles Yes, I smelled the candles, purest beeswax, as for the rich

"No," said the voice, thoughtfully, "rather for the church, for this is God’s church, though the Devil is our Superior General, the founding saint of our Order, so why not beeswax? Leave it to you, a vain and a worldly Venetian, to think it luxury, to confuse it with the wealth in which you ed rather like the pig in his slops"

I laughed softly "Give ic," I said "Be the Aquinas of the Devil Speak on"

"Don’t ly and sincerely "I saved you from the fire"

"I would be dead now if you had not"

"You want to burn?"

"No, not to suffer so, no, I can’t bear the thought of it, that I or anyone should suffer so But to die, yes"

"And what do you think will be your destination if you do die? Are the fires of Hell not fifty tihted for you and your friends? You are Hell’s child; you were from the first moment that the blasphemer Marius infused you with our blood No one can reverse this judgment You are kept alive by blood that is cursed and unnatural and pleasing to Satan, and pleasing to God only because He ive ain, but as respectfully as I could "There are so many of you," I said I turned my head The numerous candles blinded me, but it wasn’t unpleasant It was as if a different species of flame danced on the wicks, than the species that had consumed my brothers

"Were they your brothers, these spoilt and pa

"Do you believe all the rot you’re talking to hed now, and it was a decently, churchly laugh as though hispering together about the absurdity of a sermon But the Blessed Sacrament was not here as it would be in a consecrated church, so hisper?

"Dear one," he said "It would be so siant littlebut an instru to wall you up so that your screa accohtly s That is why I serve the Devil so well; I have never come to like cruelty or evil I despise them, and would that I could look upon a Crucifix, I would do so and weep as I did when I was aall the dancing flaest most stealthy power into his mind, but cae for shutting you out Painfully literal for such an educated infidel But then your dedication to Christ the Lord was nourished a the literal and the naive, was it not? But here, soreatly hasten our agreereement will that be?" I asked

I too heard the other A strong and terrible odor penetrated my nostrils I did notin that low ru the Dies Irae with such lewd polish The smell was noxious, the s thereof I hated it I began to turn my head and tried to stop myself Sound and pain I could endure, but not this terrible, terrible odor

"A gift for you, Amadeo," said the other

I looked up I stared into the eyes of a valean frareat urn with both hands And then he turned it

"Ah, no, stop!" I threw up my hands I knehat it was But it was too late

The ashes came down in a torrent on et them out of my eyes and my mouth

"The ashes of your brothers, Aave way to a wild peal of laughter

Helpless, lying on my face, my hands up to the sides of ht of the ashes At last I turned over and over, and then sprang up to reat iron rack of candles went over, the little fla inin themy arms up in front of my face

"What’s happened to our pretty co cherub, aren’t we? That is what your Master called you, cherub, no? Here!" He pulled at my arm, and with the other hand tried to smear the ashes on me

"You danation I grabbed his head with both th turned it around on his neck, snapping all the bones, and then I kicked hi, living still with his broken neck, but not in one piece would he live, I vowed, and kicking at hiht foot, I tore his head fro out of the gaping trunk, I yanked the head free

"Ah, look at you now, Sir!" I said, staring down into his frantic eyes The pupils still danced "Oh, die, will you, for your own sake" I buriedthis way and that, I found a candle with ht hand, ripped it from the iron nail that held it and jammed it into his eye sockets one after the other, until he saw no more

"Ah, then it can be done this way as well," I said looking up and blinking in the dazzle of the candles

Slowly, I ure His thick curly black hair was free and tangled, and he sat at an angle, black robes flowing down around his stool, facing slightly away fro me so that I could trace the lineaht A noble and beautiful face, with the curling lips as strong as the huge eyes

"I never liked hih I one so soon"

I shuddered A horrible coldness seizedhope

I hated the head I held and wanted to drop it, but the thing still lived The bleeding sockets quivered, and the tongue darted fro thing!" I cried

"He always said such unusual things," said the black-haired one "He was a pagan, you see That you never were I ods of the north forest, and in Thor ever circling the world with his ha to talk forever?" I asked "Ieven after this, mustn’t I?" I asked

He threwinnocent smile

"You are a fool to be in this place," I whispered My hands shook uncontrollably

Not waiting for a response, I turned and snatched up another candle, having so thoroughly snuffed the other, and set fire to the dead being’s hair The stench sickened

I dropped the fla head into the robed and headless body I threw the candle down into the fla up the other candles I had knocked down, I fed thereat heat rose from the dead one

The head appeared to roll about in the flarabbed up the iron candelabra I had knocked over, and using this like a rake, I plunged it into the burning mass to flatten and crush what lay beneath the fire

At the very last his outstretched hands curled, fingers digging into the palht wearily, and with the rake I knocked the ars and human blood, blood he’d drunk no doubt, but there was no other human scent to it, and with despair I saw that I had ht in the middle of the ashes of my friends

Well, it seeed in one of theh I thren the crude candleholder rake I left hie I walked dejectedly,burned offiron candelabra, where the ly clean, and there I lay down again, as I had before, not caring that the black-haired one had a very good view of me there, as I was more in front of him than even before

"Do you know that Northern worship?" he asked, as if nothing dreadful had happened "Oh, that Thor is forever circling with his harows smaller and smaller, and beyond lies chaos, and we are here, doo circle of warade lad to be rid of him, but why do you cry?"

I didn’t answer This was beyond all hope, this horrid do only re, this beautiful powerfully built black-haired being ruling a on the death of one who had served hi bones

I iined I was hoether He read from a Latin text It did not matter what the words were All around us were the accouters, and the fabrics of the roos," said the black-haired one "Vain and foolish, but you’ll coer than I reckoned But then he was centuries old, your Maker, nobody even tells of a time when there wasn’t Marius, the lone wolf, who abides no one in his territory, Marius, the destroyer of the young"

"I never knew him to destroy any but those ere evil," I said in a whisper

"We are evil, aren’t we? All of us are evil So he destroyed us without coht he was safe from us He turned his back on us! He considered us not worthy of his attentions, and look, how he has lavished all his strength on a boy But I must say you are a most beautiful boy"

There was a noise, an evil rustling, not unfamiliar I smelled rats

"Oh, yes, my children, the rats," he said "They come to me Do you want to see? Turn over and look up at me, if you will? Think no more on St Francis, with his birds and squirrels and the wolf at his side Think on Santino, with his rats"

I did look I drew in ray rat sat on his shoulder, its tiny whiskered snout just kissing his ear, its tail curling behind his head Another rat had come to sit sedately, as if spellbound, in his lap There were others gathered at his feet

See loath to ht hand into a bowl of dried bread cruled with that of the rats He offered a handful of cruratefully and with strange delicacy, and then he dropped some of the bread in his lap, where three rats came to feast at once

"Do you think I love such things?" he said He looked intently atwith the eled veil on his shoulders, his forehead very sht

"Do you think I love to live here in the bowels of the world," he asked sadly, "under the great city of Ro above, and have these, the vermin, as my familiars? Do you think I was never flesh and blood, or that, having undergone this change for the sake of Al for the life you lived with your greedy Master? Have I not eyes to see the brilliant colors which your Master spread over his canvases? Do I not like the sounds of ungodly h

"What has God made or ever suffered to be made that is distasteful in itself?" he continued "Sin is not repulsive in itself; how absurd to think so No one comes to love pain We can only hope to endure it"

"Why all this?" I asked I was sick unto vo, but I held it back I breathed as deeply as I could to let all the ss and cease to tors so that I could study him I wiped the ashes out of my eye "Why? Your themes are entirely familiar, but what is this realm of vampires in black monkly robes?"

"We are the Defenders of Truth," he said sincerely

"Oh, who is not the defender of truth, for the love of Heaven," I said bitterly "Look, the blood of your brother in Christ is stuck all over my hands! And you sit, the freakish blood-stuffed replicant of a hu on all this as if it were sothe candles!"

"Ah, but you have a fiery tongue for one with such a sweet face," he said in cool wonder "So pliant you seem with your soft brown eyes and dark autumnal red hair, but you are clever"

"Clever? You burnt my Master! You destroyed him You burnt up his children! I am your prisoner here, am I not? What for? And you talk of the Lord Jesus Christ to me? You? You? Answer me, what is this morass of filth and fancy, hed His eyes crinkled at the edges, and his face was cheerful and sweet His hair, for all its filth and tangles, kept its preternatural luster How fine he would have been if freed frohtmare

"Amadeo," he said "We are the Children of Darkness," he explained patiently "We vae of man, as is pestilence We are part of the trials and tribulations of this world; we drink blood, and we kill for the glory of God ould test his human creatures"

"Don’t speak horrors" I put ed

"Oh, but you know it’s true," he insisted without raising his voice "You know it as you see me in my robes and you look aboutLord as were the monks of old before they learned to paint their walls with erotic paintings"

"You talk madness, and I don’t knohy you do it" I would not remember the Monastery of the Caves!

"I do it because I have foundHigher Would you be damned and alone, and selfish and without purpose? Would you turn your back on a design so otten! Did you think you could live forever without the splendor of that great sche to deny the handiwork of God in every beautiful thing which you coveted and made your own?"

I fell silent Don’t think on the old Russian saints Wisely, he did not press On the contrary, very softly, without the devilish lilt, he began to sing the Latin hymn

Dies irae, dies ilia Solvet saeclum infavilla Teste David cum Sibylla Quantus tremor estfuturus

That day of wrath, that day will turn the earth to ashes As both David and Sybelle have foretold How great a tremor there will be

"And on that Day, that Final Day, we shall have duties for Hiels shall take the Evil souls down into the inferno as is His Divine Will"

I looked up at hiain "And then the final plea of this hymn, that He haveit softly in Latin:

Recordare, Jesu pie,

Quod sum causa tuae viae

Remember, merciful Jesus,

That I was the cause of your way

I pressed on, scarcely having the spirit for it, to fully acknowledge the horror "What monk was there in the Monastery of my childhood who didn’t hope one day to be with God? What do you say to me now, that we, the Children of Darkness, serve Hi with Him?"

He looked broken suddenly

"Pray there is some secret that we don’t know," he whispered He looked off as if he were in fact praying "How can He not love Satan when Satan has done so well? How can He not love us? I don’t understand, but I am what I am, which is this, and you are the saain to underscore his wonder "And we must serve Him Othere are lost"

He slipped fro on the floor oppositearm out to place his hand on ," I said, "and to think God ht, the perfect bodies you rendered to the fire"

He was in deep distress "Amadeo, take another name and come with us, be with us We need you And ill you do alone?"

"Tell o of me and let his hand fall in the lap made by his black robe stretched across his knees

"It’s forbidden to us to use our talents to dazzle mortals It is forbidden us to trick them with our skills It is forbidden us to seek the solace of their coht"

Nothing in this surprised me

"We are monks as pure at heart as those of Cluny," he said "We make our Monasteries strict and holy, and we hunt and we kill to perfect the Garden of Our Lord as a Vale of Tears" He paused, and then , he continued "We are as the bees that sting, and the rats that steal the grain; we are as the Black Death coly, that men and women shall tremble at the power of God"

He looked at

"Cathedrals rise from dust," he said, "to show man wonder And in the stones men carve the Danse Macabre to show that life is brief We carry scythes in the army of the robed skeleton who is carved on a thousand doorways, a thousand walls We are the followers of Death, whose cruel visage is drawn in a million tiny prayer books which the rich and the poor alike hold in their hands" His eyes were huge and drearim domed cell in which we sat I could see the candles in the black pupils of his eyes His eyes closed for a ht

"Your Master knew these things," he said regretfully "He knew But he was of a pagan tirace of God In you, he saw God’s grace, because your soul is pure You are young and tender and open like the ht You hate us now, but you will come to see"

"I don’t know that I will ever see anything again," I said "I’, of longing, even of hate I don’t hate you, when I should I’m empty I want to die"

"But it’s God hen you die, Amadeo," he said "Not your own" He stared hard at erslowly in their earthen cells, saying they must take sustenance for it was God’s hen they should die

I tried to hide these things, I drew these tiny pictures toOne word caht that before this time I had been a fool

Another cah a wooden door, letting it close carefully behind her as a good nun ht do, in order that no unnecessary noise be made She caray hair was tangled and filthy, as was his, and it too had forht and density behind her shoulders Her clothes were antique rags She wore the low hip belt of wo a shapely dress that revealed her s hips, the courtly costui Her eyes, like his, were huge as if to suloo and fall, and the fine bones of her cheeks and jaw shone well for the thin layer of silvery dust that covered her Her neck and bosom were almost bare

"Will he be one of us?" she asked Her voice was so lovely, so co, that I felt I’d been touched by it "I have prayed for hih he makes no sound"

I looked away frousted by her, my enemy, who had slain those I loved

"Yes," said Santino, the dark-haired one "He’ll be one of us, and he can be a leader He has such strength He slew Alfredo there, you see? Oh, it onderful to behold how he did it, with such rage and with such a baby’s scowl on his face"

She looked beyond me, at the ruin of what that vampire had been, and I didn’t know myself as left I didn’t turn to look at it

A deep bitter sorrow softened her expression How beautiful she must have been in life; how beautiful still if the dust were taken away froly, and then becahts, lasses, as your Master did I need no velvet or silks to servehe is, look at hiht have penned verses in honor of such beauty, that it should corace God’s sooted fold, a lily in the dark he is, a fairy’s child planted by ht in a aze and ed me, but I could not bear in this Hell to lose the sheer beauty of her voice, its deep sweetness I didn’t care what she said And as I looked at her white face in which e in stone, I knew she was far too old for my impetuous violence Yet kill, yes, yank head froht of these things with clenched teeth, and him, hoould dispatch him for he was not so old, not nearly by half with his olive skin, but these co by a northern wind, the deep frozen wind ofinside of me

Ah, but they were beautiful

"You will not renounce all beauty," she said kindly, having drunk uptheated beauty- when you take life and see thatweb as you do suck it dry, and dying thoughts do fall on you like wailing veils to dim your eyes and lory or perdition-yes, beauty You will see beauty in the stars that can forever be your comfort And in the earth, yes, the earth itself, you will find a thousand shades of darkness This will be your beauty You do but forswear the brash colors of ht of the rich and the vain"

"I forswear nothing," I said

She s with a warhere and there in the ardent flicker of the candles

She looked to Santino "Hoell he understands the things we say," she said "And yet he seenorance"

"He knows, he knows," the other answered with surprising bitterness He fed his rats He looked at her and orian chant again

I heard others in the dark And far away the drums still beat, but that was unendurable I looked to the ceiling of this place, the blinded mouthless skulls that looked on all with limitless patience

I looked at theht, and behind hied rairay hair parted in the middle, her face ornamented by the dust

"Those Who Must Be Kept, child, ere they?" she asked suddenly

Santino raised his right hand and esture

"Allesandra, of that he does not know Be sure of it Marius was too clever to tell hiend we’ve chased for countless years? Those Who Must Be Kept If They are such that They must be kept, then They are no more, for Marius is no h , that I should let them see this, no, an abomination Marius no o on, as if in fear for me

"God willed it God has willed that all edifices should crumble, all texts be stolen or burnt, all eyewitnesses to mystery be destroyed Think on it, Allesandra Think Time has plowed under all those words written in the hand of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John and Paul Where is there one parchnature of Aristotle? And Plato, would that we had one scrap he threw into the fire when feverishly working-?"

"What are those things to us, Santino?" she asked reprovingly, but her hand touched his head as she looked down She sh she were his Mother

"I meant to say that it is the way of God," Santino said, "the way of His creation Even what is writ in stone is washed away by ti mountains I meant to say the Earth eats all, and now it’s taken hiend, this Marius, this one so o his precious secrets So be it"