Lucifer's Crown Read Free

her legs. She forced her feet to carry her forward.
    The lines of the woman's naked body were as smooth as those of a marble effigy. She lay on her back, one hand at her side, the other on her breast, fingers curled as though holding an invisible object. Her chalky face and the dark hollows of her eyes looked up to where the sky should have been but wasn't.
    It was the yoga woman. I don't believe this. It isn't happening. “Hello?” Rose croaked. But the woman's marble-like chest didn't move. From her body emanated not the odor of sanctity, the sweet scent of a saint's incorruptible body, but the stench of mortality and death.
    Outside the chapel something moved. Rose spun around with a gasp. A shape and a quick flutter—it must be a bird, one of those big crows they'd seen yesterday. If it was the man he'd be trying to help the—the dead woman. Wouldn't he?
    This was a nightmare, yes, but it wasn't a dream. Rose felt the blood drain from her face. Her head spun. All Saints’ Day sacrilege pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death go for help ...
    She sprinted toward the gate and the lighted windows of the custodian's lodge.

Chapter Two
    Just as Mick walked into the office the phone went. He dropped his rucksack on the desk chair and lifted the receiver. “Dewar Woolen Mills, Mick Dewar speaking."
    His father's voice said, “Thank God. I rang the flat, I didna ken where you'd gone."
    Mick frowned. He was away to university in Glasgow, where else would he be going on a Monday morning? And he knew he'd given Calum the number of his mobile. “Where have you gone, Dad? You didna ring last night. I stopped in at the office to see if you'd left a message with Amy."
    Calum's voice was thin and taut and his words stumbled. “I didna have time to ring—I came away from Glastonbury in the wee hours, used up my petrol and stopped outside Carlisle ... The hounds of hell are after me, Mick."
    "Eh? What?"
    "There's something you're needing to know. I never told you before, I didna believe it myself, but it's true, it's true ... My telling you will have them after you as well. God, damned if I do, damned if I dinna."
    "What?” Mick's heart drummed in his chest like the drops of water drummed onto the asphalt of the car park outside the window.
    His father's ragged exhalation sounded like fabric ripping. “Listen to me. The Bruce's relic, it was at Arbroath not so long since. Sinclair came to my father and me and we helped him shift it."
    "Alex Sinclair, your chum from university?"
    "His father. I met Alex later. I'd say that was a right coincidence, but nothing's a coincidence, is it? Nothing at all."
    Alex had died donkey's years ago, hadn't he? Mick remembered his father lifting his glass in a salute to the dead. Was Calum drunk? Whilst his father had a taste for the whiskey, Mick had never known him to take too much. But then, he hadn't seen overmuch of Calum of late. He had the university, the band, and the lasses.
    Calum wasn't drunk. He was exhausted. He was ill. He was terrified. “Dad?” said Mick, his own voice shaking. “I—I'll hire a car, I'll..."
    "It was our duty then. It's our duty now. Oh God, Mick, I should have told you this long since, but I didna believe it. No time now. Time's run out, it's come to an end. Protect it, Mick keep it from them. From him."
    "Protect what? From who?” In the back of his mind Mick heard the voice of his literature lecturer correcting, “from whom."
    "From himself. Am Fear Dubh . Take the A68 and the A7—the high road, eh?” Calum's voice cracked into a dry giggle. “Take the high rood—road—to Fairtichill, and then the wee road west..."
    "Dad, you're not sensible."
    "Then up you go, toward Schiehallion, the fairy mountain with its triple peak. My grandfather Malise used to tell about that road, and then he'd say each man has to bide his own weird. Meet his own fate."
    Something wasn't right with his father's geography, but then, all of this was dead