175663.fb2 Skull Moon - читать онлайн бесплатно полную версию книги . Страница 89

Skull Moon - читать онлайн бесплатно полную версию книги . Страница 89

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Skullhead, grinder of flesh and render of souls, lay sleeping on the altar as the dogs of war inched closer. He snoozed and dreamed of the old days of slaughter and barbarity. He was sure these days would come again.

His arrogance would allow him to accept nothing less.

But what he failed to realize in the blood-misted corridors of his brain was that this was a new age and men had little use for the old gods. In these times, men wanted gods that were quiet, that didn't interfere with their own plans and conquests. Advisors, not active participants. The days when men offered up their sons and daughters to primeval monsters were long gone. In the collective psychology of the masses, this was unthinkable.

But none of this would have made any sense to Skullhead.

His was a reptilian brain-a mass of nervous tissue devoted to need, want, and desire. He was hungry, so he ate; thirsty, so he drank. His loins ached, so he raped; his territory was threatened, so he killed. Simplicity itself. The perfect hunter, the ultimate predator. There was logic and reasoning in that brain, too, but it was generally only applied to methods of the hunt, to slaughter, to self-indulgence. The little men existed only to feed, clothe, and worship him. And they should do these things, his brain decided, because he wished it.

So the beast lay on the altar, beneath ravaged symbols of Christianity, a god in his own thinking, sainted by atrocity, immortal through his own appetites. In God's house he waited, bloated with sin and suffering, his belly fat with human meat. A Christian demon, as it were, in the flesh.