Page:Weird Tales Volume 29 Number 1 (1937-01).djvu/24

"Cordieu," de Grandin murmured as the guards closed round us and began to crowd us from the room, "she may murder us to death, but I damn think she can do no worse to us than she has done to him!"

"Thrue fer ye, Doctor de Grandin, sor," Costello rumbled. "You an' me wuz soldiers an' Doctor Trowbridge is a gintleman. Thank God we ain't more scared o' dyin' than o' dishonorin' ourselves!"

The square before the pyramid blazed bright with torchlight. On three sides, ranked elbow to elbow, stood the "Children of the Bat" looking through the peep-holes of their masks with frenzied, hot-eyed gloating. Before the temple steps there crouched a line of drummers who beat out a steady, mind-destroying rhythm. We stood, legs hobbled, between our guards, looking toward the temple stairs, and I noticed with a shudder that at intervals of some eight feet four paving-blocks had been removed, and beside each gaping opening was a little pile of earth. The cross-pits had been dug.

"Courage, mes enfants," de Grandin whispered. "If all goes well——"

Costello's lips were moving almost soundlessly. His eyes were fixed in fascinated awe upon the cross-holes in the pavement; the expression on his face showed more of wonder than of fear. "To hang upon a cross," I heard him whisper, "I am not worthy, Lord!"

"Morbleu, she comes, my friends!" the little Frenchman warned.

Tiny tom-toms, scarcely larger than a tea-cup, beat out a low, continuous roar beneath the thumbs and knuckles of the double line of bat-masked women filing from a doorway in the temple. Behind them came an awe-inspiring figure. Skin-tight, a sheath of finely-woven jet-black silk, sheer and gleaming as the finest stocking, cased her supple form from throat to ankles, its close-looped meshes serving rather to accentuate than hide the gracious curves of her long, slim limbs. Moccasins of cloth of gold were on her feet, her head was covered with a hood which bore the pointed snout and tufted ears of a great vampire bat. In the eyeholes we could see the red reflection of the torchlight. Joined to her body from arm-pits to hips were folds of black-silk tissue, and these, in turn, were fastened to her tightly fitting sleeves, so that when she spread her arms it seemed that great black wings stretched from her. Her hands were bare, and we could see the blood-red lacquer gleaming on her nails as she curved her fingers forward like predatory talons.

"La Murciélaga! La Murciélaga!" rose a mighty shout of homage from the crowd of bat-masked men and women. It was not so much a cry of greeting as of stark insanity—of strange disease and maniacal excitement. It spouted up, cleaving the heavy, torchlit air like a terrible geyser of sound.

The drums redoubled their wild rata-plan, and the shouting grew more frenzied as La Murciélaga mounted a low block of stone and stood outlined in torchlight, great sable wings a-flutter, as though she were in very truth the dread Death Angel come to grace the sacrifice of poor lives with her presence.

"Look, sors, for th' love o' hivin!" bade Costello.

Across the torchlit square there walked, or rather danced, a man. In his hand he held a tether, and I felt a wave of sick revulsion as I recognized the thing he led. It was the Commandant of Tupulo. He was chained and muzzled like a dog, and he went upon all fours, like a brute beast. As his keeper led