He lifted both hands in a convoluted, ritual gesture.

He believes it, Michael thought. He really believes he can stop us, like that… Glancing at Briggs, he felt sure that the secretary had no such faith. His narrowed eyes were as cynical as his gun. He was leaning back against the table; the plump pink feet and calves were bare.

“Briggs,” Galen said. “Don’t be a fool. So far you’re guilty of nothing the law can touch you for. You can’t possibly expect to get away with murder. Put down the gun.”

“Gun?” Gordon seemed to see the weapon for the first time. His face twisted with annoyance. “Come, now, Briggs, you know we don’t need that. I can hold them.”

Galen ignored him.

“I’m a doctor, Briggs. This man is psychotic, and very dangerous. If you cooperate with us, I’ll see that you get away scot-free.”

For a second Michael thought it was going to work. The fat man’s eyes narrowed until they almost disappeared. Briggs was perfectly sane, in the usual sense of the word; his faith in his dark master was almost all sham. Michael could see him weighing the advantages: Gordon’s money and influence, the satisfaction of the various lusts of the flesh to which Gordon’s patronage gave him access, against-what? Freedom and immunity? Freedom to return to the cold, hostile outer world and abandon his nice soft nest.

“Briggs,” Gordon said impatiently. “Put away that silly toy and go on with the ceremony. Our audience has arrived. I want them to see everything.”

“Yes, master,” Briggs said quickly. “But-can you keep your control of them, and give your mind and heart to the offering?”

“I have bound them in the web of darkness. There they will stand until they rot, unless my will releases them.”

Michael was dangerously close to jumping the main actor. Briggs’s ridiculous gun had destroyed the aura of superstitious terror that had hitherto shielded Gordon; he saw the man for what he was, half mad, wholly evil. He felt light-headed with relief at the removal of that greatest fear, and was inclined to dismiss the menace of the weapon. A little thing like that, in Briggs’s pudgy, womanish hand-hell, he probably couldn’t hit a barn door at ten paces. Two things kept him in his place. One was his promise to Galen, silent at his side. The other was the sight of Gordon’s big-muscled hands, so close to Linda. He could snap her neck with one twist of those brown hands. And he was capable of doing it, if his fantasy world was destroyed.

Michael heard a controlled, barely audible in-take of breath from the man beside him. Galen’s first attempt had failed. Briggs’s weapon enforced, and reinforced, Gordon’s madness, and Briggs was now committed. In seeming obedience he had stepped back behind the makeshift altar, his hands outstretched over it; but the wide sleeves of his robe, and the spacing of the candles, left those hands in shadow, and Michael had no doubt of what they still held.

Galen knew the danger as well as he did, or better. But his friend’s next move took Michael completely by surprise.

“I am bound in the web of darkness,” Galen said suddenly. “But not forever. I call upon the Masters of the Great College to come to me.”

Hands lifted, he spat out a string of strange syllables, rich in gutturals. Michael wondered what half-forgotten adolescent lesson he was using; but he forgot that when he saw the impact of the words on the other listeners. Linda’s body jerked violently, as if something had struck her. Gordon went pale. He fell back a step, and after a moment his voice rose up, clashing with the other voice in an equally unintelligible chant.

Galen, rock-still in his place, waved his hands and switched to Latin.

His attention fixed on the combatants, Michael did not see what, if anything, Briggs was doing; later, he had to admit that Briggs might have thrown some new chemical into the smoldering bowls on the altar. But he felt the change in the air; it smelled like the acrid stench of burning flesh, and it made his head spin.

Backing away, step by dragging step, Gordon resembled a fighter reeling under the blows of invisible fists. His face was no longer pale; it was dark with fury, and swollen out of recognizable shape. The words still poured from his distorted mouth; and Michael imagined, insanely, that he could see them take shape in the air and strike back, against the shapes of Galen’s incantation.

Galen had gone back to Hebrew, having exhausted his stock of appropriate Latin and Greek. Alone in the center of the room, Linda swayed back and forth, eyes glassy. Michael had forgotten his desire to go to her; he was only half aware of a pudgy, dark form, creeping at them from the direction of the altar.

Gordon was back now within a few feet of the shrouded window, his hands writhing, his face unrecognizable. Then Galen’s breath failed; and in the split-second lull, Gordon’s voice rose to a howl. The curtains behind him bellied out as if in a sudden gust of wind; the nearby candles flickered and went out. The black draperies wrapped Gordon around like enormous sable wings. Within their shelter he swayed, staggered, and dropped to his hands and knees.

Galen’s voice faltered and went on; Gordon’s answered. The droning beat of the two voices, the evil stench in the air-untouched by the chill blast of wind-the effect of shadows and the movement of the shaken draperies…All these, and other, equally explicable factors, might have explained what Michael saw. The shape of Gordon Randolph-on hands and knees, four-footed like a beast, dark head lowered-blurred and shifted. When the outlines coalesced, they were no longer those of a man.

He was not the only one to see it. Linda screamed and covered her face with both hands. Michael moved, without plan, his only motive the need to get between Linda and the thing that paced slowly down the length of the floor toward her.

What Briggs saw, or thought he saw, they would never know for certain. Michael heard the gun go off, at close range; the entire magazine let loose in one undirected, hysterical burst. The bullets had no visible effect on the dog. It came on, with the unnatural slowness of nightmare, its padded feet making no sound on the carpet. Michael saw something fat and black in his way; he removed it with one sweep of his hand and then caught Linda in his arms, turning, holding her head against his chest so that she could not see.

Another shot and another…or was it the blood pounding in his ears? The room had gone dark-or was it because his eyes were closed? There was only one sense left to him, but it was enough-the feel of the warm, living body in his arms, and its response.

Galen had to shake him, hard, before he opened his eyes. The older man’s pallor was so pronounced that he looked bleached-hair, face, eyes.

“It’s all right,” Galen said. He laughed, shortly and humorlessly. “What a description…”

“You got it?” Michael asked.

“Got it? What?”

“The dog…Don’t, I don’t want her to see.” He stiffened, trying to shield Linda as Galen’s impersonal hand caught her chin and forced her face up.

“She’s all right, too,” Galen said. “I’m sorry, Linda; you’re entitled to a nice long bout of hysterics, but not just yet and certainly not here. The servants must have been wakened by that cannonade. We must leave before someone comes.”

“I don’t want her to see…” Michael repeated, with idiot persistence.

“She had better see it.” Galen turned them both, and Michael saw the sprawled body of Gordon Randolph. The white shirt was no longer white. The face was as blank as a wax dummy’s.

“Dead,” Galen said. “Like any other mortal creature.”

Michael felt Linda shiver, and lifted her into his arms as he heard the first tentative rap on the door.

“It’s locked,” Galen said softly. “But we’d better get going. Down the outside staircase.”

When they got to the car, Michael was somehow not surprised to see a familiar shape sitting on the roof. Galen grabbed Napoleon, who came without protest. They were back on the main highway before anyone spoke.