Deathstalker 06 - Deathstalker Legacy

thus prevented them from being all that they might be. Religion got in the way of human evolution. There should be only Science, the creation of human minds. Anything else was a waste of time, and distracted people from doing something productive with their lives.
    No one paid the Club a lot of attention. It was briefly fashionable, but fashion moved on, as fashion does, and most of the radical philosophers found something else to pontificate about. Something more likely to get them invited back on the chat show circuit again.
    But the Hellfire Club didn't die. It went underground, its few surviving members becoming even more radical, more extreme. They became decadents, glorying in excess of all kinds, opposed to all restraints on human nature. They made Sin their religion, and the Church their hated Enemy. Just for the fun of it.
    They set fire to Churches. Committed blasphemies in graveyards. Assassinated a few priests. And finally decided they weren't getting enough publicity. Something new was needed. Something big. Something awful.
    Douglas and Lewis had answered a routine emergency call from a Church in the Parade of the Endless.
    When a news crew with nothing better to cover asked if they could send a camera along, Douglas had shrugged, and said Sure. Why not?
    On the holoscreen, the camera recording showed Douglas and Lewis standing outside the main door of the Church. It was hanging open, supported by a single brass hinge. Blood was spattered across the pale wood, in runs and splashes, and in the bright red shape of a handprint, clear as day. Douglas and Lewis looked at each other, and drew their guns. Their faces were stern, but calm. They thought they'd seen it all before. Lewis pushed the door open and Douglas darted inside, gun at the ready. Lewis followed him in, and the camera went after them.
    Inside, there was blood everywhere. Bodies lay slumped and scattered among the overturned pews.
    Men, women, and children in their Sunday best, hacked apart. Arms lying outstretched in the aisles, as though still begging for mercy, or help that never came. Hands piled up like offerings. Heads impaled on the wooden railings, silently screaming. Douglas and Lewis walked slowly down the center aisle, checking the shadows for am-n bush. Everyone in the Court watched in silence. They knew what was coming. Even Brett was holding his breath now.
    Douglas's face was full of a cold fury. He had his disrupter in one hand and his sword in the other now, and he stalked down the center aisle like a wolf on the trail of its prey. His whole body radiated an outrage and an anger almost beyond control. Lewis stopped and knelt beside a dead child, cut in half at the waist. He slowly put out a hand to close the child's staring eyes. The camera zoomed in for a close-up of Lewis's familiar, ugly face. He looked .. . tired. So much evil, his face seemed to say. How could people do such things? And as they watched, as everyone in the Court watched, the tiredness went out of his face, replaced by stern, uncompromising resolve. Lewis was going to kill someone, and
    everyone knew it.
    At the far end of the Church, they came to a heavy hanging curtain. Douglas pulled it down and threw it aside, with one violent movement, and saw a sight out of Hell itself. The altar had been used for sacrifice.
    Lots of it. The whole marble edifice was running with fresh blood. Behind the altar, the Church's priest had been crucified to the wall, upside down. His throat had been cut, afterwards. And half a dozen members of the Hellfire Club, shaped by illegal body shops into the nearest they could get to devils (red skin, curled horns on their brows, hoofs instead of feet), were taking turns to drink the blood they'd collected from the slashed throat in the priest's own silver chalice.
    They were laughing when the heavy curtain suddenly disappeared, revealing them. They spun around, and their crimson faces fell as they saw Douglas and Lewis. Arrogance and devilish glee were gone in a moment, and there was only fear. They went for their guns. Douglas and Lewis shot the two whose hands were closest to their weapons, killing them instantly, and then they charged forward, swords in hands. Douglas was shouting something, his voice thick and incoherent with rage. Lewis was silent. They fell upon the remaining devils. One of them tried to put up a fight, and Douglas gutted him with one swift sideways cut from his blade. The devil fell screaming to the