The Devils of D-Day (24 page)

For endless minutes, the eighth demon of the evil
sephiroth
stood there, turning its head to gaze with
stately malevolence at his thirteen acolytes, and the noise was so overwhelming
that I thought it was going to deafen me
for ever
.

Madeleine went down on her knees, and I followed her. She
shouted, unheard by the devils in the howling noise: ‘This is
Adramelech
! He takes on the form of a donkey to mock Our
Lord’s ride into Jerusalem!’

‘What the hell are we going to do?’ I yelled back. ‘Even
more to the point – what’s
Adramelech
going to do to
us?’

‘Wait!’ she told me. ‘When the moment comes – we’ll act!’

There was a deep rumble, and then the feedback noise dropped
off to a low howl.

The basement walls began to
rematerialise
,
and within a few moments the awesome
Adramelech
was
standing amongst us in the cellar, slowly taking in his surroundings, and
waiting for the subservient rustling of his devils to subside.

I was aware of such evil in the air that my pulse refused to
calm down. It was more terrible than I could have imagined possible. It was a
hundred times more scaring than being jostled by hoodlums on your way
home,
or waking up in the night to hear someone breaking the
window of your back door. It was absolute high-pitched fear that went on and on
and on and never subsided.

Adramelech
turned towards
Madeleine and me. I heard a clear, cultivated whisper say: ‘Who are these?’

‘They are mortal disciples, converted to the ways of hell by
Elmek
,’ responded
Umbakrail
.

There was a pause, but I didn’t dare to look up. Beside me,
Madeleine stayed on her knees, her hands clasped together as if she were
praying. I didn’t blame her. In the face of the demon
Adramelech
,
there didn’t seem to be much else you could do.

Adramelech
said: ‘I am pleased,
Elmek
. You have brought us together again at last, as the
Nine Books of Hell have always predicted. Does it not say in the Third Book
that we shall help in a mortal war which shall divide us, but that we shall
come together in time for yet another mortal war?’

‘Those are the words, master,’ said
Umbakrail
,
in a subservient tone.

Adramelech
turned his attention to
Lieutenant-Colonel
Thanet
, who had been forced to
kneel in front of him by two of the devils.

‘And which is this?’ he asked.

Cholok
said: ‘This is one of the
mortal
warmakers
, who has been attempting for years
to discover the words which could summon you up, O master, but also those words
which could send you back,’

Adramelech
laughed. ‘Only a
blood-bargain can send me back, little
warmaker
,’ he
said. ‘And each time I am summoned, the blood demanded must be more. You are
even more ignorant than those
warmakers
of times gone
by.’

Lieutenant-Colonel
Thanet
raised
his bruised face and looked up at the demon
Adramelech
.
‘Would you really help us?’ he said, unsteadily. ‘If we struck a blood-bargain,
would you really help us, like you did during the war?’

‘Which war?’ demanded
Adramelech
.
‘We have fought in many wars! We fought at Agincourt, and
we turned the Romans back at Minden! We fought in South Africa, with the Boers;
and we fought best of all on the Somme, and at Passchendaele, and Ypres, where
we did what you wanted us to do, and exterminated a whole generation of your
young men.’

‘I know that,’ said Lieutenant-Colonel
Thanet
.
‘But will you help us now?’

‘You want to exterminate more?’ asked
Adramelech
.
‘Then you have a lust for destruction and violence which pleases me. There is a
close bond between the hierarchy of hell and mortals like you, and it pleases
me. One day, perhaps, when mortals finally understand the purpose for which
they were created, they will destroy themselves no more, and despair no more;
but I trust that we can stay that day as long as we can.’

Lieutenant-Colonel
Thanet
, for one
rare moment, looked up at
Adramelech
like a man,
instead of a soldier. ‘You know?’ he asked the demon. ‘You know why we’re here?
Why there are humans on earth?’

Adramelech’s
sardonic laugh
sounded like a thousand tons of rock dropping down a thousand empty mineshafts.
‘Know? But of course I know! But why should that trouble you? Your purpose is
infinitely tinier, yet infinitely more exciting! To destroy, and to have in
your hands the power of destruction! To inflict pain on yourselves! To pull
down everything that the works of man and God between them have created!

Why should you concern yourself with philosophy when you
have such pleasure at your disposal?’

Clustered around
Adramelech
like
fawning courtiers, the devils hissed and whispered. There was a pause, and then
Lieutenant-Colonel
Thanet
said: ‘We need your power
for NATO. Do you know what NATO is?’

‘Of course, little
warmaker
.
Adramelech
is omniscient.’

‘Well, it’s been my brief to summon you up, and ask for your
help.’

Adramelech
looked down on
Lieutenant-Colonel
Thanet
with indulgence. ‘You do
not have to ask for my help. But you do have to bargain for it. Tell me what
destruction you desire to be wreaked, and I will tell you what price you will
have to pay. The price, I warn you, is always blood.’

Lieutenant-Colonel
Thanet
looked
disconcerted. ‘I don’t want any destruction,’ he said. ‘I simply want to have
you on hand as a
defence
unit.’

Adramelech
laughed. ‘
Defence
is nothing more than latent destruction! Why
pretend that what you are arming yourselves for is
defence
,
when all you wish to do is destroy those who you believe to be your enemies?
Show me the difference between a weapon of attack and a weapon of
defence
! Do they kill differently? Is one less dangerous
than the other? You are even more of a fool than I thought!’

Lieutenant-Colonel
Thanet
tried to
get to his feet. ‘Now look here!’ he snapped. ‘It was my work that brought you
here, and it’s about time you appreciated it!’

Adramelech
, for a moment, was
quiet. Then he said: ‘I appreciated the work of Patton and Eisenhower, little
warmaker
. Patton had me summoned through the circle of my
thirteen acolytes, and he came to me as a man bent on destruction. He wanted
the Germans killed, and killed quickly. I admit that he was frightened of us,
and that he kept us in check with his priests. But he desired death for his
enemies, and he paid us in blood, and we were satisfied. Patton and Eisenhower
were both men that I could be proud of.
But you?
What
are you saying? That you don’t want to kill after all?’

Lieutenant-Colonel
Thanet
was
flustered. He was also terrified, although he was trying desperately not to
show it. He said shakily: ‘We can’t ask you to go out on a rampage of death and
destruction right now. There isn’t a war. Not like there was with Patton.’

‘Why should that matter?’ asked
Adramelech
drily. ‘If you unleash us on your enemies, we will make a war for you.
A war that you will win.’

‘I don’t want you to!’ shouted
Thanet
,
wincing in pain from his broken rib.

‘You have no choice,’ said
Adramelech
.
‘Now we are summoned, you cannot send us back without fulfilling a bargain. You
have absolutely no choice at all.’

Lieutenant-Colonel
Thanet
said:
‘What kind of a bargain would you settle for? You’ve already killed four of my
men.’

Adramelech
turned his monstrous
head. ‘I would settle for you,’ he suggested, in that sinister whisper. ‘I
would definitely settle for you.’

‘Me?’ asked
Thanet
, horrified.
‘What do you
mean,
me?’

‘I would find it enjoyable to bite off your head,’ said
Adramelech
.

Lieutenant-Colonel
Thanet
was very
white. He knelt there for a long while, swaying with shock and stress. Even
then, I don’t think that he could truly believe that
Adramelech
was real. His mind had retreated into itself, and his subconscious was probably
busy reassuring him that he’d drunk too much bitter and eaten too many pickled
onions, and that he was going to wake up soon.

‘What’s the alternative?’ he said queasily.
‘War?
Is that it?’

Adramelech
said nothing.

Lieutenant-Colonel
Thanet
twisted
his head around painfully and looked at Madeleine and me. Madeleine hissed: ‘Don’t
offer him anything! Sit tight and don’t offer him anything!’

Lieutenant-Colonel
Thanet
looked
back at the Chancellor of Hell. He said, in an almost inaudible voice: ‘You
have to give me some time.’

Adramelech
said: ‘There is no
time.’

‘But I don’t know what to do! I can’t let you-

Adramelech
bellowed, in a surge of
ear-splitting feedback: ‘There is no time!’

There was a frozen moment when the demon was glowering at
Thanet
and
Thanet
was staring
back at him in terror. Then the Colonel heaved himself up from the floor and
made a dive for the cellar steps, screaming at the top of his voice at the pain
from his broken rib.

It was
Askalon
, the devil of fire,
who stopped him. As
Thanet
reached the fifth or sixth
step, he was suddenly engulfed in fierce, roaring flames. The spectacle was
horrifying.
Thanet
screamed again, and tried to beat
out the fire that
shrivelled
his hair and his skin
and burned up his body fats, but his hands were alight, too, and all he did was
fan the flames even more ferociously.

He stood for a moment, a man of blackened flesh and fire,
and then he dropped sideways off the steps and collapsed on the floor.

Adramelech
watched him in
grotesque silence. Then the demon whispered: ‘A coward and a fool. Not a
warmaker
at all. At least Patton gave me blood.’

Madeleine touched my hand. She whispered: ‘Don’t move. Don’t
say a word,’ and then she stood up and faced
Adramelech
and his devils with
a calmness
and a straight-backed
self-confidence that I think I would have found impossible.

She said: ‘
Adramelech
.’

At first, the demon didn’t hear her, although some of his
lesser devils did, and turned their slanted goat-like eyes towards her.

Madeleine said, louder: ‘
Adramelech
!’

The demon lifted his strange mulish head. He said nothing
for a while, until Madeleine had walked right up to his deformed feet.

‘I know you,’ he whispered, suspiciously. ‘I
recognise
you from times gone by.’

Madeleine stayed where she was – erect and unafraid.

‘I have seen you before,’ said
Adramelech
.
‘Speak your name, mortal!’

‘My name is Madeleine
Passerelle
,’
answered Madeleine. ‘But you know me first as Charlotte
Latour
;
and you shall know me by another name, too.’

‘What do you mean?’ growled
Adramelech
.
There was something about Madeleine that unsettled and disturbed him.

Madeleine placed her hands together in the gesture of
prayer. She said quietly: ‘I was the girl given to you by General Patton in
payment for Operation Stripes. They said I was a collaborator, and that I had
betrayed the French resistance movement.

Only God knows that this was not true, and that jealous
friends had given the story around. But I had to suffer for it, all the same,
and I was taken to England and put before you, to appease your destructive
wrath. I shall never forget what you did to me, how you gave me agony beyond
any endurance, and how you abused my womanhood to the ends of natural or
supernatural imagination.’

Adramelech
didn’t answer, but his
devils were disturbed, and I could hear their claws scratching impatiently on the
floor.

‘I died,’ said Madeleine simply. ‘I died and I ascended into
the realms of Our Lord, and into the care of Our Lady Queen of Heaven. I know
now what heaven is; and because I know what heaven is, I can understand hell.
Heaven is the state in which the faith and steadfastness of the heart are
rewarded in the very way in which your mind imagines Heaven to be. Hell is the
working of ignorance and self-indulgence against the real purpose of humanity.’

Adramelech
said: ‘If you died,
Charlotte
Latour
, how are you here?’

Madeleine lifted her head, ‘I was reborn on the day of my
martyrdom as the daughter of Jacques and Edith
Passerelle
.
I did not know that I was a reincarnation, not until the time came to take
Elmek
from the tank, and to reunite your acolytes in this
cellar.

It is only today that my mind has fully
realised
the wholeness of my destiny, and that, as a reincarnation, I have a heavenly
duty to perform.’