Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Fifteen


The cell door crashes open in a splintered fury. John stands within the doorway, his eyes blazing with mad fire, his mind snapped and broken. The lunatic with a gun in his hand. His wild, senseless eyes searching through insanity’s fog for elusive answers, for sweet revenge.

“Get up! On your fucking feet! Now!” The order barked, though his voice is shaking.

Paul stands and tries to carry an air of defiance in his posture before the impostor who was once his brother, the betrayer of his own blood.

“Julia… is dead… I want to know what you have done, you bastard?”

“Nothing.”

“Tell me you cunt! It called you Aleister, why? Fucking tell me”

Paul feels the panic spreading through his body, he is faced with death carried on the aroma of Frankincense that fills the air. “I don’t know.”

“Liar!”

Paul suddenly leaps, his instincts burning and John’s finger pulls against the trigger. An explosion as the gun fires but the shot is wild, wide, the bullet scores the cell wall. Under the duress of disaster Paul’s reactions peak. He knocks John off balance and flies into the illumination of the Temple.

John pulls himself up and runs into the Temple. His arm is rigid before him. He sees the form of his brother diving behind the altar. Wild gunfire, irrational, bullets fly ineffectually towards deadened walls. The gun clicks, and clicks empty.

He runs forward and is faced with his own ritual dagger, held in Paul’s hand. It slashes at him again and again. Suddenly he feels the bite as it slashes his chest and then the plunge. He falls clutching the hilt where it emerges from his own chest, blood fills his mouth and foams at the wound.

He looks up and, for a moment, it is John, Paul’s John. Paul stares into the melancholy eyes and then John falls forward, his spirit flown.

The light has died.



© 1990 & 2006 Andrew M Boylan