Chapter One

Father Mancini had just awoken when the trapdoor opened with a tortured creak, letting in a blast of cold air and late-November rain.

The old priest froze in the darkness. All around him, he could hear the deep breathing of his companions, lost to the sweet oblivion of slumber; and above that, the low echo of feet scuffing against the frigid stone of the cellar steps.

Praying silently that their hiding place had not been discovered so soon, Mancini crawled from his alcove, feeling his way between the close nest of sleeping bodies to the far wall. Pressing his gnarled hands flat to the icy bricks and crumbling mortar, he rose quietly to his feet and traced the courses of ancient masonry to their jagged demarcation of a crude doorway, through which he could peer into an adjoining basement.

The forceful draught from the winter world beyond was suddenly staunched and Mancini heard the bolts of the trapdoor being shoved awkwardly into place. Then, as he continued to watch cautiously, he made out the beginnings of a wan glow framed in an opposite entrance.

The light grew stronger until its source appeared: a paraffin lamp clutched in the hand of someone Mancini could not immediately identify. The old priest’s heart began to beat faster as he hoped and prayed for the intruder to merely be one of their own group. He finally heaved a heavy sigh of relief as the hooded figure turned and Mancini recognized Sebastian’s distinct profile.

But the priest’s relief was short-lived as the inevitable question drove itself to the forefront of his mind: just why had Sebastian left their hiding place in the middle of the night? When everyone had settled down a few short hours ago, Mancini was sure that Sebastian had been in his allocated sleeping place in this chain of forgotten cellars beneath an undeveloped tract of Parisian waste ground.

Mancini set his jaw as he struggled with his doubts. Despite his seventy years, he would never be uncertain about something like that. Not these days. Not when all their lives depended on it.

“Sebastian?” he whispered amiably, masking any suspicions he had behind his ready smile as he stepped forward into the lamplight.

The young man whirled; this reaction, and the ashen face evident even by the sallow glow, betraying a conscience patently with something to hide.

“Sebastian?” Mancini repeated slowly. But Sebastian refused to meet his searching gaze and turned his eyes instead towards a corner of the cellar beside his own bed of ragged blankets and stale carpet, where a small figure lay whimpering feverishly.

“Minette,” Sebastian murmured, striding over other fitfully-sleeping bodies to reach the restless five year old. As he crouched next to the child and fingered a stray lock of her hair from her sweat-beaded forehead, Sebastian at last turned eyes brimming with tears to Mancini.

“I had to do it, Father,” he rasped. “For Minette. I had no choice. I’m sorry.” A hoarse sob rose in his chest, causing his whole body to shudder. “I am so very sorry.”

Suddenly Mancini was gripped by fear. Surely Sebastian hadn’t? Surely he couldn’t...?

For the first time, the old priest noticed the small paper bag clutched in Sebastian’s left hand. On the side, plain by the lamplight, the words: 24 Hour Pharmacy.

Mancini’s heart plummeted. So it was true. Sebastian had left to buy medicines for his desperately ill daughter. Something any loving parent would have done. And under any other circumstances, Mancini himself would have been the first to condemn anyone who neglected such a duty to their ailing child.

But not now. Not in these times. For the cost of Sebastian’s undoubted love for his daughter was just too high a price to pay. After all, what value could be placed on an individual’s eternal soul?

Mancini ignored the bag and grabbed Sebastian’s other hand so violently that the young man cried out in pain. But the priest needed to see the awful truth for himself.

He broke out into an icy sweat. There it was. Little more than a small red welt on the back of Sebastian’s hand. Such a seemingly insignificant blemish. As trivial as Eve’s mouthful of forbidden fruit....

“You fool,” was all that Mancini could mutter. “You damned fool.”

But Sebastian’s tears were not the face of contrition. “But Minette,” he pleaded, gesturing once more to his sick daughter. “She is so ill, and I had the means to help her. God surely will not judge me for that!”

Mancini lifted his piercing blue eyes to meet Sebastian’s. A righteous anger seized the priest, pinching his features into an uncharacteristic harshness. Had he failed so miserably to teach this hopeless band of believers anything? How often had he warned them against temptation such as this? That no matter what, no matter how dire the straits, they must not bow to extremity and accept the mark of the Antichrist?

He decided against pursuing Sebastian’s argument for extenuating circumstances. Time now was of the essence. This young fool had not only succeeded in damning himself for eternity. By having the small electronic chip implanted in his hand, he had put the lives of the whole group at risk.

“You have less than twenty-four hours,” Mancini told him bluntly. “The chip is locked into your central nervous system and will already be receiving data feed from the main monitoring station in Strasbourg.”

Sebastian swallowed and paled as Mancini continued: “The mark is much more than a means to buy and sell. Much more. It’s about control. The chip creates an interface for your own subconscious and the propaganda machine of the Antichrist, serving only one end.”

Mancini regarded Sebastian with undisguised compassion now. Anger was pointless at this stage.

Whatever happened to the rest of them - and almost certainly, they would all be martyred as subversives - it was Sebastian who was to pay the ultimate price for his actions.

“In twenty-four hours, the person you are now will be gone forever. You will be little more than an unquestioning robot under the control of the Beast. That is why it is decreed that whoever receives his mark is doomed to hell. There can be no other just consequence for a soul which willingly places itself into the hands of Satan.”

The whole chain of cellars had come to life, with the twenty or so believers cramped into the dank underground sanctuary whispering fearfully among themselves as the news of Sebastian’s apostasy filtered through the group.

“Could you not simply have trusted God for Minette?” Mancini breathed, gripping Sebastian’s shoulders with a mixture of grief and disbelief colouring his voice. If only he could take Sebastian’s punishment for him. The priest felt certain that at this moment he would offer his own soul to the fires of hell if it would atone for the youth.

But it would not. And Sebastian was visibly shaking as the full horror of his backsliding, and the impact of Mancini’s words began to sink in.

“My God, what have I done?” he choked, slumping to the floor and hugging his knees, rocking back and forth like a child. “What have I done?”

Closing his eyes, Mancini took a deep breath, endeavouring to steady his emotions. There was only one option. It was drastic. But it was the only hope Sebastian had of cheating the eternal torment that was surely ahead of him once this tribulation of the saints was ended by the coming of the Saviour.

“Sebastian!” Mancini snapped. “Sebastian, look at me!”

Frozen with terror, Sebastian forced himself to meet his mentor’s stern gaze.

“There is one way Sebastian,” the priest revealed. “One way alone to reverse what you have done. But it is far from easy.”

Sebastian swallowed and clutched Mancini’s coarse woolen habit. Hope flickered across his bloodless, haunted features. “Anything,” he rasped, “I’ll do anything. Tell me!”

Mancini took another deep breath. He could feel the tension in the air as the rest of the group listened with bated breath.

“‘If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life maimed than to have two hands and be thrown into the eternal fire.’”

Everyone gasped as Mancini quoted the words of Christ and then gripped Sebastian firmly.

“There is no other choice for you, son. None. It will be hard, you know that. We have no anesthetic, no drugs to ease the pain. That lack is what has brought us to this point. But if we do not act now, then it will soon be too late for you, Sebastian.”

Mancini placed his hands on either side of Sebastian’s face and held it as a father, their eyes only inches apart.

“Can you trust God, Sebastian? Have faith in him like you have never had faith before? Believe that he will bring you through this, to glory?”

“Dear Christ,” Sebastian whispered, terrified. “Is there no other way?”

But Mancini was resolutely shaking his head even as Sebastian spoke. “None,” he insisted. “We must act now. I said that you had twenty four hours, but chances are we will all be dead in the next two. Already your location will be known to the authorities, and likely as not a death squad has been dispatched. If you do not consent now, then -”

Mancini did not need to elaborate.

“Do it!” Sebastian demanded with sudden resolve although he continued to tremble like an infant. “Whatever needs to be done, do it now.”

Mancini nodded gravely. He kissed Sebastian’s forehead, then bowed his own balding head in silent prayer for a brief second. Then: “I need two volunteers. Two with stomach for what we have to do.”

Several stepped forward without hesitation, and Mancini pointed to those he thought strongest for the gruesome task ahead.

“The rest of you, stay here,” Mancini ordered. “And pray. Pray hard.”

Helping Sebastian to his feet, Mancini took his arm and led him back through the cellar chain until they reached the last, deserted basement some fifty yards or so away from the rest of the group. The glow of the lamp illuminated crates holding their few precious stores - basic foodstuffs, candles, paraffin - and Mancini indicated one of them.

“There,” he said. “Jacques, Leon - hold him down.”

Mancini had anticipated that Sebastian’s nerve might fail at the moment of crisis, but the young man seemed strangely resigned to his needful act of repentance and laid his hand flat on the crate.

“Do it, Father,” he demanded with a strength which caused fresh tears to sting Mancini’s eyes. “I’m ready.”But just at that moment, there came the sound of commotion from the other end of the cellar chain. The noise of splintering wood, of cries of alarm, and gunfire.

Jacques and Leon looked at each other and Mancini in a second of uncertainty.

“Now, Father! Before it’s too late!”

Mancini glanced down at Sebastian and nodded quickly at his young disciple’s desperate plea.

“Hold him,” the priest ordered once more, raising the axe he had picked up from a musty corner of the basement. Heaving it high, he uttered a prayer for grace for all of them.

And as the blade descended, a loud burst of machine gunfire lit up the cellar.