James Axler - Terminal White

Once there, the robed acolyte—a young man with wide-set eyes and a shaven head—sat before Kane and addressed him in a calming, quiet tone. “Now you are expected to give life to god,” he said, reeling off the words as if they were entirely normal. “Have you been made aware of what this entails?”

Kane shook his head. “I must’ve missed that sermon.”

“No matter,” the robed man said gently. “It is a very simple matter.” He opened a small box located on the table—roughly the size of a travel sewing kit—and drew out an eight-inch-long needle along with something that reminded Kane of a shot glass. “We take a few drops of your blood—three or four is enough—which is your sacrifice to the stone god.”

Kane eyed the needle warily. “Is that thing clean?” he asked.

“We sterilize the sacrificial lances after each use,” the stone acolyte confirmed. “For the stone is clean and thus cleanliness is a sign of god.”

Kane nodded. “Okay. What do you need me to do?”

The acolyte drew the curtain across the little chamber for their privacy, then reached for Kane’s right wrist. Kane drew back his arm before the man could touch him; his Sin Eater was hidden there, disguised by the folds of the jacket.

“It is right to feel fear on first sacrifice, but no harm will come to you,” the acolyte soothed gently.

“Sorry,” Kane said, shaking his head. “Just have a thing about needles.” He held out his left arm—the one without the hidden blaster—pulling back the sleeve. “Go ahead.”

The acolyte brought the cup and needle down close to Kane’s wrist and instructed him to chant a prayer to the stone god. Kane recited the words he had heard at the congregation a few days before, when he and Brigid had enlisted in this ragtag pilgrimage.

“Ullikummis, lord of stone, grant me the presence of mind to recognize your works, and to embrace utopia when it descends upon us, healing all of mankind and washing away the sins of the past.”

The acolyte pricked Kane’s thumb with the needle and squeezed four droplets of blood from it.

“The bedrock of the world has slipped, but it can be corrected in time. Love shared, blessings shared, stone laid.”

Kane hated the chant but he couldn’t draw attention to himself—not until he and Brigid had found out exactly what was going on here.

* * *

IN THE BOOTH beside Kane’s, Brigid was going through an identical ritual, giving three drops of blood as she recited the prayer to Ullikummis.

Another visitor entered the third curtained booth, performing the same rite under the direction of another acolyte, and that same rite was repeated for every visitor, forty-seven people giving just a few drops of blood to show their devotion to their lord.

This blood was then removed and each little sample was added to a large chalice carved of stone that had been left rough around its edges. By the time Kane and Brigid emerged from the booths, the chalice was almost full to the brim, topped up no doubt by blood from the acolytes themselves. Three robed acolytes stood behind the stone chalice while the others manning the sacrifice booths stepped out to add their contents to the mix.

“Any idea where this is going?” Kane whispered to Brigid as they walked out of the booths and made their way toward the caldron pit where the other pilgrims were amassing.

Brigid put a hand up to disguise her mouth as she replied. “Probably just mumbo-jumbo,” she whispered back.

Kane didn’t like that “probably”—it rankled on him like a bad tooth.

The last pilgrim’s blood was added to the chalice, and then the lead acolyte, a man Kane thought of as their leader, held the chalice aloft and began to speak in a loud, portentous tone. “Witness,” he said. “You have all given of your lives so that the stone god may rise again. Everyone who has visited this sacred place, the cradle where god was born—everyone has given of themselves and their blood, a thousand devotees who would shed their own blood to make the world a better place. You have all given of yourselves to fuel his self. You have all given your love that his love might walk here among us today.”

Beside the leader, two of the robed acolytes began using shovels to sift through a pile of pebbles behind them. Kane had not noticed that before, hidden as it was behind the flaming pit, and for a moment he mistook it for coal or a similar fuel that might be used to stoke the fire. But then he realized—with a sinking feeling—what those stones were. While he was on Earth, Ullikummis had budded “stone seeds” from his own body—hundreds, perhaps thousands of the things had gone into circulation. The stones had different properties but they each connected the user to Ullikummis in some way. For many, the stones were simply used to generate obedience, lodging under their skin and driving away all thoughts but those that Ullikummis himself planted within a victim’s mind. For others, the ones whom Brigid had dubbed firewalkers, the stones granted limited periods of invulnerability, turning their own flesh into the stone hide of their master.

The strange stones were a tie to Ullikummis, and Cerberus scientists had learned that they were powered—brought to life, if you will—by the iron content in a person’s blood. However, the stones had lost their influence once Ullikummis had been dispatched from the Earth, and the Cerberus personnel had speculated that they may work on a proximity basis as well as needing the ferrous content to fuel them.

Suddenly, Kane saw where this oddball ceremony was leading—and his stomach twisted in knots as the realization dawned. Surely they could not revive Ullikummis through his depowered stones. That could not be done—could it?

Kane and Brigid watched as two great heaps of stones were shoveled into the caldron pit, spitting out sparks as the flames touched them. As one, the crowd of pilgrims stepped back, watching in awe as the flames lit the sacred temple, turning the walls a richer shade of orange.

Then the senior acolyte stepped forward, his arms straight, holding the chalice aloft in both hands. “Our love is rock,” he chanted, “and rock never breaks.” Then he tipped the scarlet contents of the chalice into the flaming pit, moving the stone cup in a circular motion, draining it of its blood. The flames were doused in places as the liquid struck, and a hissing sound echoed through the temple as steam billowed from the caldron pit.

For a moment nothing happened; the flames kept burning, igniting higher as they recovered from the dousing that they had received. The acolytes stepped back from the caldron pit, watching it through the haze of smoke.

And then Kane saw it—something moving amid the flames. It looked like a man, head rising, shoulders, chest and arms slowly emerging from the fire.

The other people in the room saw it, too, and they stood transfixed as the imperfect figure seemed to pull itself from the flames.

It’s some kind of illusion, Kane told himself. Gotta be.

But it wasn’t. The manlike figure drew itself higher, lifting its torso out of the fire. It was rough, unfinished, its skin—if it was skin—lumpy and incomplete. There were gaps between parts of its flesh—open gaps through which the flames of the caldron could be seen. And something else became clear as it drew itself out of those flames: it was big; bigger than a man, broad-shouldered and towering to nine feet in height. That was the exact same height as Ullikummis when he had first walked the Earth, before his legs had been hobbled by Enki’s sword, leaving him a full foot shorter.

A deathly hush filled the room as the figure emerged from the fire. Kane and Brigid watched with the others as the figure took its first unsteady step out of the fire. It was made of stones, malformed and lumpy. It looked like someone had spilled pebbles into the shape of a man, a lumbering pile of shale staggering slowly across the temple. Its face was just an impression, deep, lifeless sockets for eyes, a gaping maw for a mouth.