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"But you see, Marius, someone very old must surely be sending these deadly little emissaries to us, and it is this old one whom we must destroy. "

''And how will you do that?" I asked.

"We mean to lure him to Rome," said Avicus, "and we've come to ask you to join us. Come down into the catacombs with us tonight and tell these young ones that you are a friend. "

"Ah, no, you are mad to suggest this!" I said. "Don't you realize they know about the Mother and the Father? Don't you remember all I've told you?"

"We mean to destroy them to a one," said Mael who stood behind me. "But to make a fine finish we must lure the old one here before the destruction. "

"Come, Marius," said Avicus, "we need you and your eloquence. Convince them that you are sympathetic. That they must bring their leader here, and then and only then will you allow them to remain. Mael and I cannot so impress them as you can. This is no vain flattery, be assured. "

For a long time I stood with my paintbrush in hand, staring, thinking,

Should I do this, and then finally, I confessed that I could not. "Don't ask it of me," I said to Avicus. "Lure the being yourselves.

And when he comes here, let me know of it, and then I promise I will come. "

The following night, Avicus returned to me.

"They are such children, these Satanic creatures," he said, "they spoke of their leader so willingly, admitting that he resides in a desert place in the North of Egypt. He was burnt in the Terrible Fire, no doubt of it, and has taught them all about the Great Mother. It will be sad to destroy them, but they rampage about the city, seeking the sweetest mortals for their victims, and it cannot be borne. "

"I know," I said quietly. I felt ashamed that I had always allowed Mael and Avicus to drive these creatures from Rome on their own. "But have you managed to lure the leader out of his hiding place? How could such a thing be done?"

"We have given them abundant riches," said Avicus, "so that they may bring their leader here. We have promised him our strong blood in return for his coming, and that he sorely needs to make more priests and priestesses of his Satanic cause. "

"Ah, your strong blood, of course," I said. "Why did I not think of it? I think of it in regard to the Mother and Father, but I did not think of it in relation to us. "

"I cannot claim to have thought of it myself," said Avicus. "It was one of the Satanic children who suggested it for the leader is so weak that he can never rise from his bed, and survives only to receive victims and to make followers. Of course Mael and I immediately promised. For what are we to these children with our hundreds of years? "

I heard nothing further of the matter for the next several months, except I knew through the Mind Gift that Avicus had slain several of the Satan worshipers for their public crimes which he considered to be so dangerous, and on one mild summer night, when I stood in my garden looking down over the city, I heard Mael rather distantly arguing with Avicus as to whether they should slay all the rest.

At last the band was slain, and the catacomb was empty, and drenched in blood, and Mael and Avicus appeared at my house and begged me to come to it for those returning from Egypt were expected within the hour and we must strike fast.

I left my warm happy room, carrying my finest weapons, and went with them as I had promised.

The catacomb was so small and tight, I could scarce stand up in it. And I knew it at once to be the burial place of mortal Christians and a place where they had sometimes gathered in the very first years of the sect.

We traveled through it some eighty or ninety feet before we came into an underground place, and there found the old Egyptian blood drinker on his bier, glaring at us, his youthful attendants horrified to find their abode empty and full of ashes of their dead.

The old creature had suffered much. Bald, and thin, black from the Great Fire, he had given himself up utterly to the making of his Satanic children, and so never healed as another blood drinker might. And now he knew himself to be tricked. Those he had sent on to Rome were gone forever, and we stood before him, looking down upon him in judgment, blood drinkers of unthinkable power who felt no pity for him and his cause.

Avicus was the first to raise his sword, but he was stopped as the old creature cried out,

"Do we not serve God?"

"You'll know sooner than I will," Avicus answered him, and with the blade, cut off his head.

The remaining band refused to run away from us. They fell on their knees and met our heavy blows in silence.

And so too it was with the fire that engulfed them all.

The next night and the night after that we went back, the three of us, to gather the remains and burn them over again, until it was finished and we thought that had put an end to the Satanic worshipers once and for all.

Would that it had been so.

Chapter 8

8