"Smith, Guy N - Sabat 01 - The Graveyard Vultures" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Guy N)

The hotel lobby was deserted as he entered, pulling himself up the narrow flight of stairs, exhaustion threatening to close in on him at any second. Somehow he made it to his room, slammed the door gratefully behind him and leaned against it. He saw the rolled up carpet, the pentagram chalked on the bare boards. Everything as he had left it... Oh, merciful God, no!

The silver chalice lay on its side, dented as though some heavy object had knocked it over and crushed it. A shaft of early morning sunlight streaming in through the small latticed window glinted on the buckled shiny metal, reflecting a dazzling print that had tarnished where it had struck - a cloven hoof mark \

Sabat's horrified gaze followed the damp trail left by the spilled water, a meandering dried-up watercourse on a parched landscape that crossed the chalk marks, broke the continuous lines that had formed a complete star. The ultimate bastion had been breached!

'I shall live on.'

Whirling, recognising Quentin's voice, for one awful moment expecting to see his brother there in the room; maybe as the aged woodcutter, more likely in another form. But there was no body. Just the voice.

It was then that the full, awful realisation hit Mark Sabat. He heard the maniacal laughter again and this time knew from whence it came ... from within himself!

He rushed to the cracked and dusty wall mirror, stared at his reflection. No outward change except exhaustion stamped on his aquiline features, dirt-grimed, clothing dishevelled.

'You fiend!' he hissed. 'You foul monster, Quentin. I have killed you, sought to destroy you for the good of Mankind. But instead your soul has possessed me. But not completely. D'you hear me, Quentin, not completely. For I still have my own soul. A man with two souls, like Petraux, the French sorcerer.'

'And what happened to Petraux?' A mocking question asked within his own mind, taunting.

'He died . . . and rose again in another life,' Sabat muttered as he recalled the legend, the story of how Petraux had fought a battle within himself and in the end took his own life so that when he was born again the evil which had triumphed over him lived on. 'But it shall not happen to me, Quentin. You and I have fought and hated for too long, in bygone lives, and still I live. I must take you with me where-ever I go, but it will not be easy for you because I shall fight you all the way. The black powers may have an enemy within my camp now, but I also have one within theirs. And maybe one day I shall destroy you totally.'

This time there was no answering jibe, just a silence that was disturbed by the rattle of crockery somewhere down below as the hotel kitchen prepared for the start of another day.

Shoulders slumped, eyes already beginning to close with fatigue, Sabat lurched towards the bed which stood in the centre of the pentagram. His dragging feet caught the chalice, and sent it rolling until it struck the skirting board with a metallic clang. Fully dressed he flung himself on to the bed, felt sleep swamping him like an incoming tide, the relentless rollers sweeping him along.

And he dreamed; a dream in which his astral body went forth with Quentin at his side. Not the Quentin he had fought in that clearing, a revolting specimen of senility, but a young and handsome man who bore his own looks. A desert landscape in which nothing grew except sparse cacti and even they were wilting in the terrible heat. Water that loomed up ahead and then vanished as they approached ,it. But Quentin seemed unperturbed striding along as though he felt no discomfort, Mark struggling along beside him and trying to hide the agony of his roasting flesh.

And in the hottest part of the day (did the temperature ever vary and was there such a thing as nightfall?) they came upon the battleground, multilated bloody bodies lying in the sand, huge black vultures devouring the human carrion, seemingly undisturbed by the intrusion of living men.

Mark Sabat stared and felt the horror eating his stomach like a quick-growing cancer. Two races were intermingled with the carnage, light-skinned,-fair-haired warriors lying prone with the heavier-built, dark-skinned ones, the latter's faces brooding scowls even in death. No victors, no losers, just a stalemate deathlock in the eternal battle of Good versus Evil, Light versus Dark.

And only two remained alive in this desert hell; himself and Quentin. The last ambassadors. The armies were destroyed and now the outcome depended upon this final duel to the death between the two of them.

Sabat awoke, his clothes clinging damply to his skin, his face wet with sweat. Waning sunlight flooded the room and he was aware that it was late afternoon. Within minutes he was shivering as the perspiration began to cool on his body, his thoughts going back to that terrible parched desertland of death. He smiled faintly to himself; that had been the first test, his astral alone with Quentin's in that burning hell, but he had been strong enough to return to his own physical body even though his brother had come back with him. Neither could destroy the other in the final battle so both must share the same body.

But the real battle was only just beginning.










CHAPTER ONE