Nightside 02 - Agents of Light and Darkness

approaching the church from outside. Measured, unhurried footsteps. The man in black heard them too, flinching at the sound, but he wouldn’t look back; his mutilated face was fixed desperately on the altar. The footsteps stopped, just at the doorway to the church. A slow wind blew in from the night, gusting heavily down the aisle like someone breathing. The candles nearest the door guttered and went out. The wind reached me, even in my shadows, and slapped against my face, hot and sweaty like fever in the night. It smelled of attar, the perfume crushed out of roses, but sick and heavy, almost overpowering. The man in black whimpered before the altar. He tried to say sanctuary again, but he couldn’t get his voice to work.
    Another voice answered him, from the darkness beyond the church’s doorway. Harsh and menacing, and yet soft and slow as bitter treacle, it sounded like several voices whispering together, in subtle harmonies that grated on the soul like fingernails drawn down a blackboard. It wasn’t a human voice. It was both more and less than human.
    “There is no sanctuary, here or anywhere, for such as you,” it said, and the man in black trembled to hear it. “There is nowhere you can run where we cannot follow. Nowhere you can hide where we cannot find you. Give back what you have taken.”
    The man in black still couldn’t find the courage to look back at what had finally caught up to him, but he clutched his black cloth parcel to his breast and did his best to sound defiant.
    “You can’t have it! It chose me! It’s mine!”
    There was something standing in the doorway now, something darker and deeper than the shadows. I could feel its presence, its pressure, like a great weight in the night, as though something huge and dense and utterly inhuman had found its way into the human world. It didn’t belong here, but it had come anyway, because it could. The odd, whispering voice spoke again.
    “Give it to us. Give it to us now. Or we will tear the soul out of your body and throw it down into the Pit, there to burn in the flames of the Inferno forever.”
    The face of the man in black contorted, caught in an agony of indecision. Tears forced themselves past the heavy black stitches that closed his eyes and ran jerkily down his shuddering cheeks. And, finally, he nodded, his whole body slumping forward in defeat. He seemed too tired to run any more, and too scared even to think of fighting. I didn’t blame him. Even as I hid deep in my concealing shadows, that sick and pitiless voice scared the crap out of me. The man in black unwrapped his cloth parcel, slowly and reverently, to reveal a great silver chalice, studded with precious stones. It shone brilliantly in the dim light, like a piece of heaven fallen to earth.
    “Take it!” the man in black said bitterly, through his tears. “Take the Grail! Just… don’t hurt me any more. Please.”
    There was a long pause, as though the whole world was listening and waiting. The man in black’s hands began to shake so hard he was in danger of dropping the chalice. The harmonized voice spoke again, heavy and immutable as fate.
    “That is not the Grail.”
    A great shadow leapt forward out of the doorway, rushed down the aisle, and enveloped the man in black before he even had time to cry out. I pressed my back against the cold stone wall, praying for my shadows to hide me. There was a great roaring in the church; like all the lions in the world giving voice at once. And then the shadow retreated, seeping slowly back up the aisle, as though … satiated. It swept through the open doorway and was gone. I couldn’t feel its presence in the night any more. I stepped cautiously forward, and studied the figure still crouching before the altar. It was now a gleaming white statue, wearing a tattered black suit. The white hands still held the rejected chalice. The frozen white face was caught in a never-ending scream of horror.
    I collected all my candles, checked to make sure I’d left no traces of my presence anywhere, and left St. Jude’s. I walked home slowly, taking the pretty route. I had a lot to think about. The Grail… if the Holy Grail had come to the Nightside, or if the usual interested parties even thought it had, we were all in a for a world of trouble. The kind of beings who would fight for possession of the Grail would give even the Nightside’s toughest movers and shakers a real run for their money. A wise man would consider the