Lightning flashed, and the wind lifted walls of dust and storms of shale particles around us.
'Our time is up/ Voke cried to me.
'How true/ said Malahite. 'And now, your promise. I have answered you fully. Are you men of your word?'
*We can't save you from death, Malahite/ Voke told him. 'But the abominations you have chosen to align yourself with are coming to consume your soul. We can at least be merciful and extinguish your spirit now, before they arrive/
Malahite grinned, flecks of shale clicking off his exposed teeth. 'Damn your offer, Commodus Voke. And damn you both/
'Move, Voke!' I cried. Malahite had simply been keeping us talking, padding his story out. He knew damn well we had nothing much to offer him except a swift end. That didn't interest him. He wanted revenge. That was his price for speaking. He wanted to make sure we were still here, when the end came, to die with him.
The desert behind him raptured upwards, throwing rock and dust into the cyclonic gale. A column of blood exploded out of the ground like a geyser, half a kilometre wide and a dozen high. It rose like a gigantic tree, swirling with pustular flesh, sinew, muscle, ragged tissue and a million staring eyes that coated it like glistening foam.
Branch-like tendrils of bone and tissue whipped out from the swirling, semi-fluid behemoth and tore Malahite apart.
It was the most complete, most devastating fate I have ever seen a man suffer. But he was still smiling, triumphantly, as it happened.
TW E Ы TY-TWO
In the mouth of the warp.
A mandate to purge.
S6-Izar.
The psychically manifested memory of the fringe world and its excavation site blurred away, shattering like an image in a broken mirror. But the towering daemon-form remained, keening in the lethal darkness, driving the tempest of damnation down upon us.
I felt Voke lash out with his mind against the thing, but it was a futile gesture, like a man exhaling into the face of a hurricane.
'Back!' I yelled, my voice lost and distant even to me.
I saw him falling into the void at my side, reaching for me. I yelled his name again, holding out my hand. He cried out an answer I couldn't hear.
Instead, I heard shouting, screaming and the blast of gunfire.
I sprawled painfully onto the cold paved floor of the chapel, soaked with blood and plasmic-residue, gasping for air, my heart bursting. The noises now were all around me, deafening and clear.
I rolled.
Panic was emptying the chapel. Priests and novices alike, acolytes and retainers, all were fleeing, wailing, overturning pews. Lord Rorken was on his feet, his face pale, and his devoted bodyguard, with their saintly masks, were charging forward, their broadswords whirring as they described masterful figures of eight.
I saw Voke, unconscious, nearby. Like me, he was saturated with inhuman gore and the drooling liquor of the immaterium.
I couldn't find my balance, and there was a dullness in my head. I retched clots of blood. I knew I was damned. Damned by the warp, ruined and stained. I had strayed too close too long.
The astropaths were staggering backwards, frantic, shrieking. Some were already dead, and others were convulsing or haemorrhaging. As I looked up, two exploded simultaneously, like blood-filled blisters. Arcs of warp-energy flashed among them, frying minds, fusing bones and boiling body fluid.
Malahite's corpse had gone. In its place on the plinth, crouched a thrashing, screeching horror of smoke and rotting bone. The astropaths had broken the link, having staunchly sustained it long enough for Voke and I to escape. But something had come back with us.
It had no form, but suggested many, as a shadow on a wall or a cloud in the sky might flicker and resemble many things in a passing moment. Inside its fluttering robes of smoke, starlight shone and teeth flashed.
The first of Rorken's bodyguards was on it, slicing with his sword. The razor-keen blade, engraved with votive blessings and curial sacraments, passed harmlessly through wispy, ethereal fog.
In response, a long, attenuated claw of jointed bone, like a scythe with human teeth growing from the blade edge, lashed out and chopped through his torso and his holy blade, bisecting both.
