Darren Craske - The equivoque principle

'Take antidote? Don't mind if I do,' said Renard, as he snatched the crucifix from Courtney's clammy hands, ripping at the leather strap around the fat man's neck. 'You know, Bishop…I'm not so sure about this eternal life thing…it looks awfully painful to me.'

Thick, dark-red blood-tears seeped from the corners of the Bishop's eyes as they beseeched Renard, imploring the man to help him.

'But why…Reynolds?' he said through blood-soaked teeth.

'I warned you once not to make a deal with the Devil, Bishop…because the odds are always stacked in his favour. You have been taken for a fool, and it is I that have done the taking.'

'What? What are you saying? I…I don't understand. Have mercy! Why won't you help me?' asked the Bishop, spluttering on a mouthful of blood.

'Why?' Renard sneered, an inch from the Bishop's contorted face. 'Because I want to watch you die, of course!' and in that instant, as the Bishop stared into the man's cold, blank eyes, it was as if his entire face changed before him. The Bishop witnessed the mask of Mr Reynolds fade away-and in his place stood Renard; a man twice as fearsome and a hundred times more cunning than a mere alleyway thug.

'Mr Reynolds, please!' begged Courtney.

'Sorry, monsieur… there's no "Mr Reynolds" here,' grinned Renard. Like a butterfly emerging from its cocoon, the Reynolds persona had shed itself completely now. As the dying Bishop mouthed empty, silent words, hysterically trying to figure out what was happening to him, Renard took great delight in telling him the entirety of his plan. 'My true name is Antoine Renard, Bishop. I suppose that I should pass on my thanks to you, really. You see, I needed something from you-but I had no idea whether it was as deadly as I had been informed,' Renard said, his French accent highlighting his machinations in a most roguish fashion. 'But right now, Bishop, you are currently presenting quite startling proof of the elixir's power.'

Renard grabbed hold of Courtney's jaw, squeezing his features into a squashed muddle in the centre of his fat face, as tendrils of blood-tainted spit dripped from the Bishop's teeth. 'But not power as some holy gift of immortality…in fact quite the reverse. God's tools are the Devil's toys, after all.'

Bishop Courtney snatched his face from Renard's grasp, and fell to the floor. With a wail of pain, he dragged himself along, finally resting against the door to his apartment. 'You traitorous monster,' he slurred. 'You'll pay for this betrayal, Reynolds.'

'That's Renard, my dear Bishop,' the Frenchman said, smiling with faux warmth. His body language was now a lot more graceful, more feline, than the thuggish Reynolds, and he strode around the Bishop's room with renewed confidence, delighting in watching the deformities of agony pass across the priest's face. 'It is strange to think that after years of research, my organisation should send me here, back to England where I spent some of my youth. When our scouts heard tales of you Bishop Courtney-one of the Queen's most trusted advisors, taking an abnormal amount of interest in a little dockland cesspit called Crawditch-well, we just had to take a look for ourselves. Imagine my surprise when I learned what you were seeking.' Renard pulled a long cheroot of a cigar from his pocket. He grabbed one of the Bishop's candelabras from the table and lit the cigar, squatting down to blow choking smoke into the Bishop's face. 'An elixir of immortality, no less? Your Christian alchemists always did love committed devotees. A lifetime of servitude, and all that, non?'

'What…do you want…from me?' gasped Courtney.

'What do I want?' questioned Renard, yanking the white cloth from the Bishop's table, sending wine bottles, goblets and messy plates tumbling onto the tiled floor with a resounding crash. He sat himself upon the table, resting his muddy boots upon an upholstered chair. 'My dear Bishop…I want nothing.' Renard delved into his pockets and pulled out a handful of glass vials, each one identical to the Bishop's, splaying them out like a fan of playing cards. 'I have in my possession everything that I need. Your Anglican friends spent decades perfecting this stuff-did you honestly think they only made the one vial?'

'What do you…plan to do?' seethed the Bishop, reaching for Renard, only to fall flat on his face on the floor. 'After what you've seen…what it can do…it is poison! It…it's worthless!'

'Poison it may be, Bishop-but it's far from worthless. You're wondering how a godly elixir can become such a potent poison, are you not?' Renard cocked his head to one side, like a sparrow. 'I'll take that as a yes, then! Now, I'm useless at all this chemistry stuff, believe me. I'm much more of a physics man, myself. You know, action…' Renard lashed out with his boot, striking the Bishop's ribs, '…and reaction, you see what I mean? Now, that I understand perfectly. But my organisation specialises in this kind of thing, so I don't need to know about it. Did you know that Crawditch cemetery, being positioned so close to the Thames as it is, contains a massive amount of sphagnum peat? I didn't, but then I didn't have a clue what "sphagnum peat" is…I thought it sounded like one of those dreadful American prospectors hunting for gold, until one of our scientific types told me that sphagnum is acidophilic moss, incredibly susceptible to the growth of bacteria.' Renard slid off the table, standing at full height, towering over the Bishop.

'Over many hundreds of years, that gestation has transformed the elixir from a gift of eternal life into a harbinger of death, especially when the solution is combined with water.' Renard grabbed the Bishop's scalp and Courtney spluttered again, spraying a shower of blood across the floor. 'Are you taking all this in, Bishop?' he taunted, taking great pleasure in watching Courtney quiver. 'Of course, I'm sure your lot had no idea that the solution inside that vial is extremely susceptible to contamination from bacteria, did they? Like most great scientific discoveries-we stumble upon them by accident.' Reynolds paused to shuffle his footing away from a small pool of blood, spreading across the floor towards him.

Bishop Courtney's strength was ebbing away, as if his entire structure was being dissolved inside him. That was the poison doing its best to liquefy his internal organs. Like most intrusive chemical elements, it operated with an almost sentient awareness-picking off its victim slowly, stripping away one piece at a time. The poison savoured death as much as Renard did, and both were highly proficient at it. Beginning with the base organs such as the kidneys, the poison would force Bishop Courtney's bowels and bladder into overdrive to compensate for the signals being sent by the brain, before moving onto the liver, lungs, heart and finally the brain.

Renard was enjoying his captive audience, watching the bulky Bishop drag himself along the floor. 'Can you grasp just what damage someone with a creative mind could accomplish with a weapon such as this, monsieur? I doubt it. You're probably more interested in your own fate, est-ce que je suis correct? Well…you've just ingested pure, undiluted poison…it may take as long as three hours before you die, and the beauty of this poison is that you'll be conscious every step of the way.'

Bishop Courtney was a broken man, in mind as well as body, as something pinched away handfuls of him at a time. He was flaking away, yet he knew that every word Renard spoke was the truth.

'There's nothing you can do, your Grace…for only the antidote can reverse the chemicals that are raging through your body right now.'

'You're…insane,' Bishop Courtney said weakly.

'On the contrary, my Lord, as you once told me yourself-I am a man of vision!' Renard said, preening his hair sarcastically.