Servant of the Bones

Suddenly Zurvan spoke, "Azriel, you have to go back in that body and make it get off the ground. Even if it means you never get out of it. You must do it."

"Azriel, please," said my beautiful Esther, "please, you know how evil Gregory is. Only an angel of God can stop him."

My father was crying as he had thousands of years ago. "My son, I love you, but they need you so badly. They need you, Azriel! Only if that slain body rises now can the plot be undone!"

I saw the rationale of it in an instant. I saw what they meant. To foil the assassination now and seize the cameras, that was the only way to warn the world.

I turned, nodding, "Go with God, Nathan!" I cried, and I heard their lovely voices behind me thanking me and praying for me.

Then suddenly from both sides I saw the malcontent spirits tearing at me, faces twisted in hate, my former Masters by the dozen whom I'd forgotten, men for whom I had done evil.

"Why do this?" "Why should you?"

"Let the madman destroy the world." "What do you care!" demanded the magician from Paris. "They're using you again. They're using you!" declared my Mameluk master, whom I'd slain on sight.

"You'll lose your spirit strength, don't you see?" "You'll be mortal in that body, trapped; you'll die in it of the wounds it sustained."

"Why suffer mortality like that when you are a free spirit!" And behind these faces and voices were legions of swarming angry, envious, and hateful spirits.

I glanced back up the Stairway. I saw them all gathered, and Nathan had his arms around the others, and they around him. Rachel raised her hand and sent to me a kiss. And in a childlike manner Esther waved. They were fading into utter brilliance. My father had become pure illumination.

I looked at the light and I let it fill me. I treasured just one fraction of a second of understanding, at peace with all things, at peace with all that had been done to me, and that I had done, and all that had ever happened; the world had meaning then. It had a full and magnificent meaning. And the millions of the poor, the hungry, the angry, the warriors-they were not parasites as Gregory had said; they were souls!

"No," I said to the angry spirits. "I have to do it." "Go into his body, resurrect it," said Zurvan, "even if it means you lose everything."

"Azriel, my love goes with you!" cried Nathan. He had begun to glow like the others.

Blackness. I felt myself sucked down as if by the most powerful mechanical force, and suddenly I was filled with pain, pain in my lungs, pain in my heart, pain in every limb, and I was blinking at the sky as men put me on a stretcher, just as they had done with Esther.

I lurched, rolled over, even though they were astonished, and saw no more stairway and no more light, only the Temple itself, and the mob screaming.

I sat up on the stretcher and then I climbed off it. The medical men backed away in pure astonishment. I knew why. The wounds were fatal. More than one was fatal.

I saw the cameras and I beckoned to the reporters. I reached out for their hands.

"Your government, your agencies. Surround this building and search it at once. An impostor has taken my place. An impostor has tried to kill me. This building is loaded with fatal viruses; and there are Temples of the Mind throughout the world ready to discharge them. Stop them. You must reach the thirty-ninth floor. You must reach the room with the map, and the impostor nailed to the wall. Hurry now! I give you permission to enter the Temple of the Mind. Take guns with you."

I turned around. Everywhere I looked, people had whipped out those little phones that open up and they were screaming into them. The police rushed at the building. Sirens screamed.

"It is an impostor," I said, "it is a twin, and he plans destruction you cannot imagine."

I could see the television cameras coming down on me. "The Temple of the Mind in every country must be stopped. Every building contains poison gas, and deadly viruses. You must stop the Temple of the Mind wherever it is, and beware their lies, beware their lies. Look what they have done to me, and I am living to tell you this."

I felt myself growing weak. The blood was pumping right out of my heart. I realized I was undone. I reached out and grabbed for a microphone. I heard my own voice, tinged with Nathan's tone, rise in volume.

"Minders, your leader has been shot and tricked. Minders, you have been infiltrated. Go inside, destroy the people who have deceived you!"

I was about to collapse. I grabbed hold of a young woman, a reporter who stood beside me with her cameraman catching every breath I took or lost.

"The Armed Services, the people who deal in deadly disease. Worldwide. Alert them. There is enough in any one Temple building to destroy a city, even this one!"

In a blur I saw them all distracted, turning away from me.

A riot of screams broke out. I turned, almost falling, supported in fact by the doctors around me. There in front of the glass doors, held back by confused and frightened followers, stood Gregory, bleeding from the wounds in his hands, screaming:

"I'm Gregory Belkin!" he cried. "That man is an impostor! Look, I bleed like Christ from my hands! Stop the Devil. Stop the Liar."

I faltered. I was almost going down. I looked around me, and then I remembered there was the gun in the left pocket of my coat. He had outfitted the drugged Nathan to perfection, as he himself would have been outfitted, even to his personal gun. It was his little gun, the one he carried the first night I ever saw him, the one he always carried.

I took the gun out, and people screamed and fell back. I staggered towards Gregory and before the bodyguards could think what to do, before anyone could, I began to shoot Gregory. I shot him over and over again. Astonished, he stared as the first bullet struck his chest, then with the second he went up in the air as if calling for help; the third hit his head. I shot another one, before anyone could stop me.

He fell dead on the pavement.

There was noise all around me. Someone had taken the gun, very carefully, from me. I heard the endless babble of voices into the phones. I saw armed men running towards the doors of the Temple and the dead body. I saw men putting down their guns and throwing up their hands. I heard shots. I turned and found myself falling into the arms of a young doctor, horrified and staring at me with awe.

I tried to search his soul. "Act fast," I said. "Act fast! The Temple will annihilate the peoples of whole countries. It is poised and ready! That man I killed is a madman. It was all his evil plan. Hurry."

Then I felt myself sinking, not down into the numb indistinct darkness of spirit sleep, but into mortal agony, into a pain that made it impossible for me to talk. I tasted mortal blood in my mouth.