Marc Chadbourn - The Devil in green

'You OK?' Mallory asked.

'Looks as though I've turned celibate.'

'Could be worse,' Mallory said. 'He could have made you shag Hipgrave.'

Daniels forced a smile, but it barely hid the anxiety eating away at him. 'Where do we go from here?' he said, shaking his head.

Mallory was woken roughly from a deep sleep. He'd resisted the promptings of the others to go to the lauds of the dead, despite Stefan's warnings about what would befall those who missed their daily quota of prayer; he had felt more tired than he had done in weeks. He'd been having a very lucid dream about Sophie who appeared extremely upset about something, although he couldn't quite remember what it was. All he could recall were her tears and her distressed voice repeating, 'You just don't know what you've done!'

For the first few seconds, Mallory was disoriented, but then he gradually realised Miller was next to him in a state of near panic. 'What's up?' he mumbled.

'Come on! You're needed!' Miller's face looked white in the gloom. 'He's dead!'

Mallory dragged on his clothes and boots in a daze while Miller jumped from foot to foot near the door. Eventually, he pulled himself together enough to ask what was wrong. Miller was rushing ahead of him so quickly that they were outside before he got an answer.

'Julian's dead,' Miller said tearfully. 'Murdered… just like Cornelius.'

The announcement came as a real shock to Mallory. Cornelius had always been a distant figure to him, but Julian was someone he could almost understand. 'When?'

'Just after the night office. They found him in the Trinity Chapel. Lord… there was blood everywhere.'

Miller wouldn't, or couldn't, tell him any more. They sprinted into the cathedral to find Daniels and Gardener standing at the entrance to the chapel. Just inside, Mallory could see Stefan and Blaine in deep conversation with Hipgrave. He began to speak, but Daniels waved him silent. The mood was grave.

Mallory waited silently with the others, casting glances into the chapel. He couldn't see the body from his vantage point, but there were blood splatters across the floor and up the walls. Eventually, Stefan led the others out. He immediately fixed his attention on Mallory.

'You weren't at the lauds of the dead,' he said.

'He was sick,' Miller interjected. 'He needed to rest.'

Stefan accepted this without comment. 'No time must be lost,' he said, turning to Blaine. 'This cancer must not be allowed to spread.'

He stalked away, head bowed, hands behind his back, a picture of grief; on the surface, Mallory thought. It was a coincidence too far for Julian to be murdered just as he was clearly preparing to offer some form of opposition to Stefan and the changes he was planning. Perhaps even Cornelius's murder wasn't as they had been led to believe.

Blaine broke off a whispered conversation with Hipgrave and departed hastily. Hipgrave came over, his eyes gleaming in the candlelight. 'We're going after the bastard who did this,' he said, with the eagerness of a young boy. 'There's a trail of blood leading into the new buildings. We're the only ones who can do this. I convinced Blaine to give us the chance.'

'Thanks,' Mallory said sarcastically. 'It could be a trap, you know. A trail of blood… doesn't sound very realistic.' He recalled die manner in which they had been led across Salisbury Plain to Bratton Camp by the illusory cleric.

'Do we have to go at night?' Miller said weakly. 'Into that place?'

Hipgrave was too excited to hear any dissent. He spun on his heels and marched towards the cloisters, one hand already on his sword, the other holding a lamp he had brought with him.

'It's a trap,' Mallory said resignedly.

'Then it looks as if we're off to die.' Gardener marched off behind the captain.

The blood was already turning dark as they followed the unmistakable signs down into the tunnels beneath the new buildings. The atmosphere was even more oppressive than on Mallory's previous incursions; it felt as though people were walking just a few paces behind them, fading into the gloom whenever they turned to look. Sometimes noises would come and go, footsteps tracking them or voices entreating them to deviate from their route, or so it seemed, but the distorting echoes continually took the truth away from them. They kept close together, Hipgrave at the front, Mallory watching their backs, all aware the threat was growing.

The splashes of blood showed up clearly on the worn stone flags in the lamplight. Hipgrave knelt down to examine them at regular intervals. 'This is going to lead us right to him,' he remarked. 'Good as if he'd fastened a rope to himself.'

'What do you think we'll find when we catch up with him?' Miller's voice was small and frightened.

'You saw the state of the bodies,' Gardener said gruffly.

'The more important question,' Mallory said, 'is why did he kill Julian? Cornelius, OK — he was the figurehead. Whatever his motivation, you could make a good case for Cornelius being a target. But Julian — he wasn't a power any more.'

'Just random,' Daniels said. 'They were both in the wrong place at the wrong time.'

'Too much of a coincidence,' Mallory replied. 'Two of the Church's leading figures killed by chance? I don't believe it.'

'You can't expect to understand the Devil's thinking,' Hipgrave's voice floated back.

They came to a branch in the tunnel. Two flights of steps wound down in different directions. Hipgrave hovered uneasily, moving from one entrance to the other. 'I can't see any blood here,' he said eventually. 'We should split up into two groups.'

Mallory pushed his way forwards. 'No, that's what it wants.'

' "It?"' Hipgrave repeated, puzzled.

Mallory shifted uneasily. 'The building. Or whatever's behind it.'

Daniels reached out uneasily to touch the stone walls. 'You've lost it, Mallory,' he said, but he sounded very unsure.

'You're saying something's organising the layout of the place?' Gardener said.

'I don't know what I'm saying.' He tried to find the right words. The darkness down the stairs appeared to be sucking at them, as if it was alive. 'I've seen some strange things… What something looks like might not be what it is.'

Gardener was intrigued. 'So what you're saying is, this bloody big heap of stone might not be a building at all. That's just the way we see it-'

'That's the only way we can see it,' Mallory said. 'Our brains aren't developed enough to see its true form, so they just do the best they can.'

'So it could be alive,' Gardener continued.

'It could be alive. It could be anything. I think down here we shouldn't jump to conclusions just because our eyes and ears are telling us that's the way something appears.'

'You see,' Daniels said, 'when they did that campaign, Just Say No to drugs, they should have wheeled you out instead. Problem solved.'

'This isn't getting us anywhere,' Hipgrave snapped. 'Which way do we go? Right or left?'

A cold blast of wind soared up from the depths, carrying with it what sounded like the growl of a wild animal.

'What was that?' Miller said tremulously.

Nobody answered. After a while, Gardener said, 'We take the right- hand path.'

'It's as good as any, I suppose,' Mallory said.

Hipgrave's earlier confidence had faded with his inability to choose the correct path. His eyes continually darted around and he had taken to rubbing his palms together anxiously. The others turned to Mallory.

'Let's go,' he said.

The right-hand stairway spiralled downwards steeply. They had to go slowly, for Hipgrave's lamp kept disappearing around a turn, plunging the rest of them into darkness. Water dripped incessantly from the stone above them, and the air was dank and cold.

When they reached the bottom, Mallory drew his sword. The others followed suit as they moved along a short passage to a doorway. Beyond it, the room glowed white in the lamplight.