Alchemist

by Peter James

  Gong! Daniel was growing, growing in stature, becoming a man. He could feel his limbs lengthening, knew that his penis was towering over the heads of his audience, knew that they were in his thrall. ‘Satan represents all of the so-called sins, as they all lead to physical, mental or emotional gratification!’

  He paused long after the peals of the next gong had died, aware that the assembly had no option but to wait for him and it felt good, so good, to have them in his power. His voice soared through the temple, delivering the last Satanic Statement.

  ‘Satan has been the best friend the Church has ever had, as He has kept it in business all these years!’

  The Magister Templi’s voice said approvingly: ‘Hail Satan!’

  The chorus resounded: ‘HAIL SATAN!’

  Gong!

  Hands untied Daniel’s blindfold. He blinked as it fell away. He saw candle flames, naked bodies, a blur of faces, and nothing but darkness beyond. It was the first time, he realized, that he had seen the members of the Order without masks. High up, shining from the darkness, he could make out the inverted pentagram on the wall. He was standing in the centre of the pentacle on the floor, alone, with a candle flickering on each point. The Magister Templi faced him from the north point, naked except for his crown, a massive, glinting ceremonial sword gripped in both hands and pointing upwards.

  Slowly he lowered the sword until it was horizontal, took a step forward and pressed the tip against Daniel’s chest. Daniel felt the sharp prick, but stood, unflinching. Energy flowed from the sword into his body.

  The hand-bell rang three times and the entire temple became silent.

  The Magister Templi raised his head high and his phallus rose into an erection. ‘In the name of Satan!’ he pronounced. ‘With this mark, o mighty Satan welcome into Your eternal kingdom Your new adept, Theutus!’

  His phallus fully erect now, he pushed the sword harder into Daniel, then ripped it savagely upwards, slicing a two-inch rip in the skin across the breastbone.

  Daniel gasped as the blade glinted past his eyes; he felt the sting of pain, then glancing fleetingly downwards saw the loose flanges of flesh and the blood trickling down. But he could cope with the pain. He was no longer Daniel Judd. No longer a child initiate. He was Adept Theutus. A man! A first-degree adept of the New Order of Satan.

  And he was an Assessor. The forty-second and final Assessor; now the Order was closed. Next week he would be presented with his mask; he had been wondering what it would be, had tried to think which creature was missing.

  Morgana, the High Priestess, walked slowly towards Daniel. She wore only her crown, the rings on her fingers and a necklace of tiny amulets.

  ‘Hail Adept Theutus,’ she said. ‘Blessed be thy feet that have brought thee in these ways.’ As she spoke she knelt and kissed first his right foot, then his left. Having done so, she raised her head and kissed first his right knee then his left, saying: ‘Blessed be thy knees, that shall kneel at the sacred altar.’

  Then she took his penis gently in her fingertips. Daniel felt it hardening even more, but he no longer minded. He was proud of it now, proud of its size.

  ‘Blessed be thy phallus, without which we would not be,’ she said. Then she kissed the tip with her lips, lingering lightly with her tongue, fixing Daniel with her eyes. Next she stood and kissed his nipples in turn. ‘Blessed be thy breast, formed in strength.’

  Finally she stared him in the face and said solemnly: ‘Blessed be thy lips, that shall utter the sacred names.’ She leaned forward and kissed him on the mouth, then stepped aside. As she did so, another woman adept took her place and repeated the same ritual. Each woman in the temple, in turn, followed.

  The last one was the youngest by some years, barely older than himself, he thought. She eyed him shyly; a striking, slender girl, with long, fair hair and a gentle smile. A bead necklace rested on the top of her large breasts, and he found his gaze drawn to her ruby nipples. His penis reached out towards her as if it were an uncoiling serpent, and he was aware of her glancing down at it approvingly.

  The Magister Templi stepped forward. ‘Our virgin initiate, Lileth, will perform the Great Rite with you in the name of His Satanic Majesty. Are you prepared, Adept Theutus?’

  ‘I am,’ Daniel replied. His voice sounded oddly disembodied, as if it were someone else speaking.

  Two older women came forward and took Lileth’s hands, guiding her down on to her back in the centre of the pentacle. They stretched out her arms so that her hands were on the two upper points of the pentagram, then they parted her legs, pushing them wide out, so that each foot was on the next two points.

  The gong rang. The Magister Templi began to incant the Lord’s Prayer backwards. As he did so, another male adept stepped forward, holding up a communion-wafer host, then inserting it slowly into the girl’s vagina. When he removed it moments later, he held it high as he spoke the communion blessing in reverse, then tossed it contemptuously to the floor.

  There was a universal call of ‘Hail Satan!’ Then every person in the temple, except for Daniel and Lileth, took it in turn to step forward and stamp on the host, grinding it into the ground.

  Gong!

  Two male adepts each took one of Daniel’s arms and guided him until he was standing directly between Lileth’s legs. Then they eased him down on to his knees.

  The gong rang three times. Daniel saw the girl watching him. He saw the soft brush of her pubic hairs, the pink lips of her vagina, felt the power coursing through his veins.

  All around him, the adepts began a chant which started low and deep, resonating, carrying with it an energy, a life force, as it rose towards a crescendo.

  He knelt, his confidence faltering for a fleeting moment, then returning as the chanting got louder and more feverish every second. The girl reached out her hand, took him firmly and began to guide him into her. He felt momentarily dry resistance, then soft moistness. He pushed gently forward, not wanting to hurt her, then felt resistance again.

  His swelling was increasing; his whole body filling with desire. His hands touched the soft skin of her shoulders and he kissed her on the lips, fully aware of everyone watching. He was doing this for all of them. He was performing the Great Rite for his Lord and Master, Satan. For Lucifer, Baphomet, Leviathan. For the Eternal Omnipotent Prince of Darkness. For the other forty-one Assessors.

  The chanting was getting wilder, and more demonic. In response, he pushed harder; harder still, felt the girl’s pelvis flexing back against him. Pushed again. She let out a tiny gasp that could have been pain or pleasure, then he suddenly slid deep into her.

  He was hardening all the time; she was kissing him ferociously like a wild animal, making tiny little cries every few moments.

  His whole body had become a pump and the release came like an exploding bomb inside him. Seed gushed like an energy force from him. It kept on, unabating. She was crying out, and so was he.

  Then suddenly he was on his feet again, looking down at her. He was towering over everyone now. Twenty, thirty, forty feet tall, the ceiling of the temple pressed against his head. Lileth’s eyes rolled up at him and a smile rippled in slow motion through her lips. Waves of energy pulsed through him. He was a giant among pygmies. His blood had been replaced with electricity. He was powerful enough to do anything he wanted.

  ‘Hail Satan!’ The chant rang out a long way beneath him, like a murmur of approval.

  I am Theutus. I was a boy who became a man who is now become a god. I am the god Theutus.

  The Magister Templi rose in height also, until he faced Daniel eye to eye. ‘You have the power now, Theutus. The power vested in you by Satan. He commands you to use it! Invoke whatever forces you wish. Satan instructs you to demonstrate your power to us all.’

  The Magister Templi shrank back in size until he was again lost in the sea of faces that stared up at the giant. Daniel clenched his fists and said the words of the ritual he had learned.

  The temperature in the temp
le began to drop. A mist was gathering around him; cold, swirling, icy. He concentrated hard, forcing the temperature lower, then lower still. Goose pimples pricked his skin. Spurts of vapour rose from the mouths of all in the temple. He smiled and spoke.

  ‘O Thou mighty light and burning flame of comfort, in Whom the great secrets of truth have their abiding, be Thou a window of comfort unto me. Move therefore, and send a servant to appear! Open the mysteries of Your creation! Be friendly unto me, for I am the same! The true worshipper of the highest and ineffable King of Hell! I ask You Lord Satan to make Thy presence known!’

  A long silence followed, as if every sound in the temple had been sucked up by the mist. The temperature was dropping further and the coils of vapour thickening. But suddenly there was a low, rippling crackle, then all the vapour funnelled upwards into a vortex.

  It gained speed, until it was ripping past Daniel like a speeded-up cinefilm. All the while, the crackle continued, shaking the air like thunder. Then, within it, he heard a scream of real agony. Enveloped within the vortex of rising mist, he could see nothing. The scream was repeated; a woman in terror, piercing his ears like a knife. Then it stopped as abruptly as it had started.

  The temple began to return to its former temperature, and the mist thinned into one thin, swirling strand until it was gone. Daniel was back to his normal size. He stared at all the faces watching him. Then he looked down at Lileth.

  For an instant, he could not believe that what he saw was real. A shock wave of revulsion ripped through him. He took a step back, panicky suddenly. But the other faces showed no emotion, no expression.

  Lileth’s head had been twisted almost full circle. Her eyes were bulging and blood trickled from her mouth and ears. Her flesh had been torn open from neck to navel; some of her guts had spilled out and lay in a tangle beside her. The hideous stench filled his nostrils.

  The Magister Templi spoke quietly from the crowd: ‘It is indeed a great power, Theutus. Greater than any other on earth. You have learned tonight just how dangerous it can be. Use it wisely, and it will serve you well all the days of your life and beyond into the eternal plane. Use it unwisely, and you unleash the most uncontrollable forces in the Universe. It is important to practise, to learn to harness the power, to moderate it and make it work for you. You have the gift of life and of death, now. Satan does not bestow it lightly. Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. Hail Satan!’

  As Daniel gazed in shock at the grotesque female remains at his feet, the chant rang out once more in unison.

  ‘HAIL SATAN!’

  73

  Saturday 26 November, 1994

  ‘What do I say to Anna Sterling, Conor?’

  He watched the two cats eating hungrily from their bowls on Monty’s kitchen floor. ‘I don’t think you say anything right now,’ he said, rattling the ice cubes in his whisky and drinking a slug.

  ‘She’s going to die, isn’t she?’

  ‘We don’t know that for sure.’

  ‘We bloody well do.’ She took a cigarette he offered without thanking him and lit it agitatedly. ‘That information in the Medici File records four deaths to date and no successful births. That’s four out of four, Conor.’

  He shook his head, holding his own unlit cigarette. ‘Four out of seven. There were three miscarriages recorded, and no information about the mothers, so I assume they’re OK.’

  ‘Great. What do I do? Go round to Anna and punch her in the stomach. Say, “Sorry, this is for your own good”?’ She pulled open the freezer door, and peered in angrily. ‘I was going to cook you a really nice meal tonight. I hadn’t realized how late it is. Have to be a microwaved lasagne.’

  Conor glanced at his watch. It was 10.15.

  Monty had noticed that the message light on the answering machine was flashing, but she was too preoccupied to bother with it at the moment. Instead she voiced her fears. ‘This is too big for us, Conor, we’re way out of our depth here. Don’t you think we should go to the police?’

  Conor looked evasive suddenly. ‘I’m not sure that’s such a smart idea.’

  ‘Why not?’ She put a corkscrew down on the table, and a bottle of red wine.

  ‘Well – I don’t think it’s really a police matter,’ he prevaricated.

  ‘Four women are dead and another ten could die, and it’s not a police matter?’ She drew on her cigarette. ‘Look, the company’s broken every rule in the book. They’ve changed the design of a drug without going through any of the proper channels. Christ, there’s no mention of animal toxicity tests, no approaches to any ethics committee, no CTX …’

  ‘CTX?’

  ‘Clinical Trials Certificate Exemption.’

  ‘Oh – right,’ he said.

  ‘What they’re doing is a flagrant breach of the Declaration of Helsinki. This isn’t just some minor protocol violation, this is criminal activity. They’re doing Phase Four trials without appearing to have done Phases One, Two or Three. There’s no mention of any reports to the Medical Control Agency. Nor the Committee for Safety of Medicines. Nothing!’

  Conor nodded; he was well aware that every new or modified drug had to go through toxicity tests on rodents and sometimes on a range of different mammals. Then the local ethics committee would authorize Phase One tests on a small number of healthy volunteers. If that stage was successful, Phase Two trials would begin on a few hundred patients, to work out the efficacy and optimal dosage of the drug. Phase Three had to involve several thousand volunteer patients in efficacy and safety trials.

  If the drug passed Phase Three, the firm concerned could apply to the Medicine Control Agency for a product licence in the UK; or to the Food and Drug Administration, the FDA, in the USA. After the granting of the MCA licence, Phase Four trials had to begin: a post-marketing surveillance study carried out with hundreds of doctors monitoring thousands of patients, lasting around a year.

  The success rate was minuscule. Only one in every ten thousand compounds selected ever made it through to a product licence; and it normally took between ten to fifteen years, with a development cost well in excess of one hundred million pounds, to bring a new drug to the market. The cost of failure was horrific; but the safeguards against anyone doing what Bendix Schere now appeared to be doing were stringent. Monty wondered how it was possible for a company the size of Bendix Schere to be up to such tricks, because such a lot of people would know about it.

  ‘Surely Bendix has internal auditors to prevent this kind of thing happening, Conor?’

  He picked up the corkscrew and began to open the wine, thinking about the woman in charge of liaison with doctors. Linda Farmer. She had been cold and unhelpful concerning Maternox. He could now appreciate why.

  ‘You’re thinking about companies that genuinely care about public welfare, rather than just giving a whole load of advertising bullshit about it. In Bendix Schere the only concern seems to be keeping the lid on.’

  Monty sat at the table, feeling exhausted. ‘I still don’t understand why you’re against going to the police.’

  ‘Just think it through for a moment and work out what that would achieve: four seems like a lot of deaths, but break it down into a percentage of the total women taking Maternox, and the annual figures of death in childbirth, and that four becomes very small. Not insignificant, but small.’

  At last he lit his cigarette. ‘Altering the design of a drug isn’t necessarily a criminal activity; it’s unethical, sure, but we need to know just what the hell really is in those capsules before we have any real ammunition.’

  ‘Surely we could just give the police a copy from your computer of what’s in the Medici File?’

  ‘And they could turn round and say it’s a matter for the Committee for Safety of Medicines, right?’

  ‘So? We could go to the CSM, couldn’t we?’

  ‘What about the consequences of going to the police with a printout I’ve obtained illicitly by hacking the company computer? For starters, I’m the one who�
��s committed the criminal offence. If we go to the CSM, I’d be out on my ass – and no pharmaceutical company would ever employ me again. And then there’s your own position.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Maternox is a wonder drug. Bendix Schere gets almost half its profits from it.’ He looked hard at her. ‘If a scandal took Maternox off the market, they could go bust overnight. And you and your father would be back to square one.’

  ‘As if that matters now!’ She rested her face in her hands. ‘God, if only. I wish to hell I’d never got us into all this. I should have listened to Daddy – I –’

  Conor shook his head. ‘You did the right thing. You just picked the wrong company.’

  She smoked the stub of her cigarette down to the filter. ‘I think the sensible thing now is to go straight to Rorke. I reckon he’d be appalled by what’s going on.’

  Conor shook his head vehemently. ‘Think about it from his position. Look at what options he’d have. If he goes to the police or the CSM, he knows that the resulting publicity will blow his company out of the water. Melt-down. End of Bendix Schere. All the staff out on their asses and the end of your father’s funding. With the name of Bannerman tarnished in the process. And –’ He looked as if he was about to say something even worse, then stopped for a moment. ‘Rorke, for all his Mr Nice Guy image, would realize exactly how he’d come out of all this. He’s the Chairman, for Chrissake; and whether he works one day a week or seven, people are going to think him some kind of an asshole for not knowing what goes on.’

  She looked at him, astonished. ‘Are you really advocating that we do nothing?’

  ‘Until we find out just what that DNA is. We have to know that to understand what territory we’re into.’

  She nodded reluctantly. ‘And what’s your hunch? What do you think that DNA is?’

  ‘I really don’t know. Maybe someone in Research and Development is running scared –’ He tapped his fingers on the table. ‘The Maternox patents start expiring in three years, and they don’t have enough new products to replace them. Maybe Crowe’s behind all this: perhaps he’s given out a load of bullshit to the company’s shareholders, and now they’re waiting to see some action which he can’t deliver. The fastest way to get a patent and to get a drug on the market, either here or over the pond, is to modify an existing product.’