There was a distinct crack, and Sheol fell over, but she scrambled to her feet, letting neither Qeteb's anger nor her swelling face distract her from her hunger.

"What then?" she whispered. Her cheek quivered, and then rearranged itself back into a normal shape.

Qeteb stared at her, then spoke. "We restore Rox's soul to the scrap of flesh within that woman's belly —"

"But that won't do any good!" Mot said. He stepped forward, his skeletal arms wrapped about himself as if his overabundant hunger would make him consume himself at any moment. "He can't be born yet, and —"

"Will no-one allow me to finish?" Qeteb bellowed, and the other Demons subsided, dropping their eyes and shuffling their feet.

It was a show of respect only. They were far too excited at the thought of the power that lay ahead to be too submissive.

"Have you learned nothing from all the worlds we have consumed? All the souls we have absorbed? Ah!"

Qeteb stalked away a few paces, then strode back, bent down and seized Niah by the hair, and hauled her to her feet.

Her face registered no pain, no offence.

Qeteb shook her so violently her arms and legs jiggled. "She is soulless. There is nothing there! If Rox inhabits the flesh within her flesh, then he can control her from her womb. He can control her power\"

"Why not simply give Rox her body to inhabit?" Sheol asked. Why bother with all this waiting for the foetus Qeteb had planted to reach a viable state?

Qeteb stared at Sheol, allowing rage to suffuse his face. Initially, he'd wanted to give Rox a new body of flesh to inhabit — Niah's flesh had been somewhat overused, after all. But now there was a very, very good reason he didn't want Rox to have permanent control of this woman's body: if she was so infused with the Enemy's power, then Qeteb wanted none of the other Demons to control it for very long. That Rox would do so for some few short weeks or months did not trouble Qeteb — after all, he was sure he could keep Rox under control for that length of time. But Qeteb would not, could not, tolerate a permanent situation where Rox controlled the vast power of the Enemy.

It might put Qeteb himself under threat.

No, better to dispose of the Niah person once and for all the instant her purpose was served.

There was one further reason why Qeteb did not give Niah's soulless body to Rox, a reason that he did not even want to voice in his mind, let alone aloud to the other Demons: there was something inside the Niah-woman that stopped him doing it.

Qeteb could not understand it. There was no logical reason why he shouldn't have been able to suffuse the Niah-woman's body with Rox's soul, but he could not do it. All his exploratory probings had been repulsed. By what? By what?

He growled, and flexed his fists, and the four watching Demons took a simultaneous, co-ordinated step backwards.

"Her body is foul and corrupted," he said, "and I wish Rox to have flesh of this flesh," he slapped his thigh, "to use. I am honouring him thus."

The other four stared at him, then decided to accept his words.

"Once Rox is installed in the foetus and has control of the woman's body," Qeteb continued in a pleasant voice, as if none of the previous unpleasantness had occurred at all, "then we will destroy Sanctuary. We will consume everything within it —"

There were howls of laughter and hunger.

"— and then I will set you to hunting down each of DragonStar's helpers, pitiful that they are, and to slaughtering them as they cringe begging for mercy."

"And then DragonStar!" Mot cried, flinging his arms wide.

"Yes! Then DragonStar," Qeteb said, and raised his arms heavenward. "And once His Prettiness is disposed of, we can turn our attention to this entire world!"

"And then?" Sheol asked, sidling close to Qeteb and laying an arm about his waist.

"Then we can rest awhile, my dear," Qeteb said, and patted her cheek. "Before the next world."

Beyond the apple grove, the wasteland ran with corruption. There were now hundreds of thousands of beasts — both human and their livestock, and formerly wild creatures — that ran the wastes. They had bred in past weeks and the young that they dropped only days after the frenzied copulations that had created them grew at a maniacal rate — and grew into maniacal shapes. The breeding itself had been utterly indiscriminate — men-things with cow-things, rooster-things with bitch-things, bull seal-things with woman-things •— and the results of these copulations were worse than horrific, more imaginative than the darkest nightmare, and far more aggressive than the most ill-trained and starved guard dog.

The wasteland crawled with corruption that could have been barely imagined by the most drug-crazed mind.

There was an eating ahead. Their master, Qeteb, had issued an invitation.

But first, Qeteb and his Demons must needs attend the Sacred Groves. Eating aplenty lay there, too, but the Demons were not about to share this meal with anyone. The power of the Mother, and of the Horned Ones, and of whatever other enchantment the Groves harboured was far too potent and far too glorious to share with the misconceived darkness that slavered in the dirt.

Qeteb stood in the centre of the apple grove and raised his hand above his head.

He twisted it in an abrupt motion, and the wooden bowl spun down out of the sky.

It wailed a little as it fell through the air, as if grieving.

Qeteb caught it in firm fingers, and squeezed the wooden flesh of the bowl until tiny cracks appeared.

"Careful!" Sheol muttered, shuffling from foot to foot.

Qeteb raised the bowl as if to strike her with it, then relaxed. "I have never been careful, my dear, only successful."

Sheol grinned. "May I be the one to —"

"We all must shed our blood for this," Qeteb said, "if we all want to go to the Groves."

He put the bowl on the ground and the five Demons grouped about it. Qeteb waved his hand, and the bowl brimmed with water; it was the colour of a murky day.

"Mother, you cow-bitch," Qeteb said in a voice that bordered on the pleasant, "we're coming to eat

you!"

He lifted his hand to his mouth and bit down savagely on his thumb.

Blood spurted out, and Qeteb let it spatter into the bowl of water.

He looked up.

The other four lifted their own hands to their mouths, bit down, and then let their blood spatter into the bowl.

Large amounts of blood also dribbled down their clothes, and stained their chins.

One of them had bit too hard, and the severed tip of a thumb fell into the bowl with a splash.

The water in the bowl turned to blood.

Qeteb laughed — then he began to howl with mirth. He abruptly stopped, his chest heaving, his eyes bright. "It's time!" he cried, and he grabbed the hands of the two Demons next to him.

They all joined hands ... and as they did their forms changed. They blurred and ran like candle wax placed too close to a fire, and each of them lifted a foot — now too metamorphosed into free-flowing form to be distinguishable as a foot — and placed it on the rim of the bowl.