But if Reggie was still alive, in some form or another, what did he want from Erin?
And what did he want from Ivan?
He was taking his time. Should she make her move now or wait? He approached Erin, seemingly unaware she was there. And Erin was equally oblivious of him.
Whatever he was up to, Billi would be ready.
Come on, try it. I dare you.
He stopped to inspect a grave a few yards left of Erin. She still hadn’t seen him. He looked around, and dropped his cup and newspaper in a bin, and brushed his hands.
Ready to make his move.
Billi tensed. She was fifteen metres away. A short sprint and she’d be on him, as hard as a thunderbolt. He wasn’t big and her mind swam with take-down strategies. Some were soft, disabling the target with minimum damage, but she preferred the hard options. If it was Reggie she wasn’t going to be gentle.
Then the man drew his flower from his buttonhole and placed it gently on the top of the gravestone. He patted it, and moved on, nodding at the mum with the pram as she strolled along.
“Hello, dear. Could you help me?”
The old woman had appeared out of nowhere. Billi had been so focused on Erin she’d not noticed her. The woman gestured at the filled water bottle. “It’s just too heavy. Could you help me get it over there?”
Billi nodded as she took the bottle. “Sure. Where, exactly?”
The pregnant woman leant over the pram, smiling and making noises at the baby as it started crying. Some kids made the weirdest noises.
She’d guessed wrong. Reggie wasn’t coming. That was the problem with cemeteries, your imagination got carried away.
The old woman murmured something.
Billi shook her head. “I’m sorry, what?”
The old woman sighed as she smiled sweetly. “I said in that bloody hole, you dumb bitch.”
The baby screamed.
The frail old woman grabbed Billi’s collar and swung her off her feet and slammed her against the tomb wall. She laughed as she did it again with no more effort than if she was tossing a rag-doll. Her grin widened and Billi gagged as a putrid stench poured out from deep within, and a row of needle-like teeth rose out from her gums.
Billi grabbed the old woman’s wrist and twisted, even as she stamped down on her knee. It was enough to rip herself free, the old woman hissed angrily, running her tongue over her fangs.
Still holding her wrist, Billi forced her lower, and snapped out a sharp kick to the jaw. It broke loose, but the old woman merely spat black bile onto the tombstone.
What had Lawrence told her about Reggie? That he’d been given minions from the Anunnaki. A type of demon called… asakku. How could she take one down? What weaknesses did they have? This wasn’t going the way Billi liked. She stumbled onto the path. “Erin!”
The baby’s scream was now a thick, gruesome throaty snarl. It climbed out of the pram, tearing its blanket into rags with long, razor-keen fingernails. And the mother...
Something was climbing out of her mouth.
Long spindly fingers stuck out from her grotesquely wide mouth, pushing back the lips wider and wider but instead of tearing and her jaw snapping apart, it all just stretched as the dome of a skull, slick with yellowish bile and spittle, pushed its way out through the expanding opening.
“Erin!” Billi legged up beside her and grabbed her wrist. “We are leaving!”
The asakku demon had climbed out of the pregnant woman who, now just an empty bag of skin, lay like a discarded coat upon the path. It was slimy, skeletal and unfolded itself, arms and legs triple-jointed so it stood ten feet tall with arms just as long. Covered in mucus it groaned as it clicked bones into place. Then its tiny, hell-red eyes turned towards Billi and Erin.
“No, no, no.” Erin covered her face with her hands. “No, no, no...”
She thinks she’s hallucinating. She thinks the medication’s not working.
Billi roughly pulled Erin’s hands away. “Listen to me. Those things are real. Real and they’ve always been real. The monsters you dreamed about were out there, Erin. Let me help you. Please, Erin. You have to trust me.”
Erin didn’t get it. Billi could see the confusion, the madness threatening to consume her. She was panting, tipping over into panic. She should slap some sense into her.
Should, but won’t.
Billi kissed her. Hard on the lips, a second or two, then broke away. “You with me?”
Erin looked just as bewildered, but in a different way. Then, of all things, she smirked. “You do that now? After all the hints?”
“Come on!” Hand in hand they ran, shoving their way through the brambles, stumbling over the roots and weaving in and out between the tombs and gravestones.
The demons chased. The old woman scuttled up trees, leaping branch to branch, howling and yelling. “Come to granny, dear! I’ll make it quick and juicy!”
The baby, despite its stumpy bowed legs, moved as nimbly as a spider on all fours. Its head had distended now to a canine snout, lips slavering as it snapped its ragged long fangs, tearing through the bushes even as it cried like a baby wanting its milk.
But Billi couldn’t see the skeleton demon. That was bad, bad, bad.
Billi tightened her hold on Erin who, though pale with fear, had locked her lips into a thin, determined line. They were going to get out of this. But she needed a weapon.
“Billi!”
The skeleton demon was galloping along the path, its talons clicking as they struck the ground.
Then Billi stumbled into a pile of sawn-off branches and dead leaves.
She locked her fingers around a branch. She swung as she heard the howl of the demon, and Erin’s scream.
Wood hit bone, and bone shattered. The left wrist went limp and the now-useless claw-like nails scraped across her shoulder. Billi swapped to a double-handed grip and brought the branch upwards, putting all her strength and swing into the heavy, bulbous knot at the end, and into the skeleton’s jaw.
The skeleton tried to catch itself as it stumbled backwards, bits of teeth and jawbone hanging from old sinew, but Billi kicked it square in the chest, taking it down. She stood over it, and raised her branch one more time…
It took three blows for the skull to disintegrate, and for the hellish light in the demon’s eyes to fade into blackness, and Erin screamed at each blow. Billi didn’t care about that. This was no time for squeamishness. The soil beneath the remains of the skull was soaked with black and grey mush by the time she was done. Billi raised her bloody branch and pointed it at the remains two demons. “Who’s next?”
Baby and old crone were more cautious now. The crone snarled. “Going to chew you up, dear. First the fingers and toes, then have a root deep inside and pull out the tasty bits. I’ll make sure you don’t die though. I want you to enjoy the feast.”
Billi grinned back. “Come on then. I’m right here.”
The demon wasn’t used to defiance. It was used to screaming and cowering and mortals surrendering to terror. It was used to its dinner being handed to it on a plate. Suddenly it was all jaws and no trousers. And Billi had a weapon. Nothing glamorous, just an old branch off an oak tree with a few small twigs still attached, but in the end the weapon didn’t matter. What mattered was the Templar wielding it. Billi had been taught by the best, and the most brutal. No finesse required when it came to smashing heads.
The crone chuckled, but it was forced and she was trying too hard. “You think you have what it takes, dear? You think you can hurt poor old granny? Kids of today, no respect for their elders.”
It was an old trick, maybe that’s all demons knew.
Billi met the old crone’s beady, malevolent gaze. “Manners? You want to teach me —”
She twisted right and jabbed just as baby burst from the bush. It was into its guts, enough to stop it, enough to make it squeal. The second blow, that was, literally, the killer. She hit it so har
d the branch cracked all the way down its length. Billi gave it a twist and turned to face the granny, the last asakku standing, with a jagged wooden stake in each hand.
Had they really thought she’d fall for it? Keep your target talking while your companion sneaks up behind. Really?
“Bye, bye, baby,” said Billi as the evil little creature melted to the ground. She winked at old crone. “Sorry, you were saying?”
The demon backed off. It wasn’t entirely stupid. “You don’t know who you’re dealing with, dear. You don’t know what powers are at play, beings that could swallow stars whole. You think you mean something? With that foolish stick? That you could possibly make a difference? You’re nothing but a mere mortal. A flea that thinks it rules the dog.”
“Fleas bite,” said Billi.
It couldn’t back down. It was a demon and she, as it had been pointed out, was a mere mortal. How would that look in hell? A demon frightened off by a little girl? Its hell-born physique made it tough, but flesh was flesh, no matter what dark energies flowed through its arteries. Billi needed this over and done with. A quick glance at Erin was warning enough. She could only take so much.
“Look, granny,” Billi lowered her sword. “Why don’t you just piss off, find three or four new mates and come back tomorrow? I thought this was gonna be a bigger deal than it was, to be honest. Demons?” Billi spat at the crone’s feet. “That’s what I think of demons.”
Granny screamed as she charged, her arms swinging wildly. Billi ducked, leading with her right shoulder, and pushed under and up, lifting the crone off her feet and slamming her against a big upright tombstone.
Still pressing her shoulder against the demon, Billi flipped the stakes in her hands, and rammed both into its belly, giving them a vicious twist until she could feel the points come out of the back and hit the tombstone. Granny shrieked, clawing at Billi, snapping her wicked fangs and struggling to get free, but Billi held her against the stone until her blows weakened and her lungs began to rattle with desperate gasps. The coup de grace was one final upward twist, puncturing the creature’s putrid heart. Black bile gushed out and granny went limp. Billi waited a second, you never knew with demons, but waited until there was no life left in it at all before stepping back.
Granny was already rotting away. In a few moments she was a dusty outline upon the tombstone and nothing more. Billi tossed the gruesome, gore-covered stakes away.
And Erin stumbled beside a gravestone and puked up her guts. She sobbed as she heaved, shaking her head, muttering to herself. Probably trying to persuade herself that she wasn’t going totally insane. Not easy at a time like this.
Billi rubbed Erin’s back to help get it all out. “Yeah, it was the same for me the first time.”
Erin wiped her mouth as she looked over her shoulder. “The first time? Who are you, Billi?”
Who indeed? To be honest, what else? “Would you believe, a Knight Templar?”
***
“Asakku demons? He summoned actual demons?” Faustus said from the other end of the call. “I should have come with you.”
“I managed.” She’d done her best to wash the gore off under the tap, but that putrid, rotting odour still clung to her.
“I need to go have a look. Find out more about these asakku Reggie has control over. He’s playing a dangerous game.”
“But at least it confirms Reggie as our Big Bad,” said Billi. The sleeve of her jacket hung in ribbons and the back was torn up. Damn. She’d been fond of that jacket. “And that Erin’s the key to all this. What does she have that he wants?”
“It’s got to be in those rubbings. You asked her why she gave them to you?”
“Not yet, but I will.”
Erin was further along, out of earshot. She’d rinsed her mouth out with a bottle of water but still looked pale and wide-eyed, staring at every person passing as if they might suddenly transform into something monstrous. Billi picked up her helmet. “I gotta take her home.”
“Want me to meet you?”
“You think Reggie might try the same trick? Summon up more of these… asakku? Have them waiting in Erin’s driveway?”
“There’s a reason they were in the cemetery. They need necromantic energies to manifest in the mortal, material realms. This existence isn’t natural to them. What worries me is how they came through. I’ve dealt with possessions before but they’d actually taken over the host bodies entirely. That’s a level of dark magic I’ve never come across.”
“You mean that was a real old lady, a real mum and… my God. I killed a baby. Bloody hell, Faustus!”
“You don’t understand. Reggie would have taken them some time ago. They have been dead a while, Billi. Just husks of flesh and bone inhabited by demonic spirits. Reggie saw to that.”
“It doesn’t make me feel much better.”
“Carry on with translating those rubbings, we need to know as much as we can about that first expedition. I’ll settle Erin at home then come over. Won’t be more than a couple of hours.”
“Call me if you need me,” said Faustus.
“Likewise.” She hung up and walked over to Erin. “How are you feeling?”
The look in Erin’s eyes was both angry and frightened. “Like shit, Billi. Like total and utter shit. All these years I thought I was going mad. I thought I was mad. And they’re real? These things in the cemetery?”
“The world’s not what you know, Erin. There’s a war going on. We call it the Bataille Tenebreuse. We’ve been fighting it for centuries.”
“We? You mean the Knights Templar? You expect me to believe that? This is all stuff of internet conspiracy theories. Do you know how insane you sound?”
“You want the world to make sense, Erin. Nice as that would be, and as comforting as that would be, it just doesn’t. There are things out there worse than what we came across in the cemetery. But I can help you beat them. And the man behind it all. Reginald FitzRoy.”
Erin’s eyes widened. “What did you just say?”
Billi put her arm around her. “Let’s get you home. Then I’ll explain everything.”
CHAPTER 21
Erin was calmer by the time they entered the kitchen. Familiar, safe surroundings had that effect, and Erin was tough. She’d been fighting battles for years, battles within her mind, and they’d given her a powerful resilience to bounce back from shock. Billi had to hand it to her. She was struggling, she was tense and twitchy, but she was keeping it together and that was more than most. Billi had seen plenty break down into hysterics, even catatonic fear, when the bad things had been revealed to them.
Billi filled up the kettle. Tea was always a good start to these conversations. “Where are the tea bags?”
“Tea bags? We don’t… let me,” Erin headed for the cabinets.
“No. You take it easy. I can make the tea.”
But Erin was already at work with the tea leaves, real proper imported from Darjeeling tea leaves, and the silver diffuser. “I can make the tea, Billi. You sit down.”
There was no arguing with her, so Billi did as she was told and sat herself on the sofa by the French doors. She needed to get her head in order. If she was going to tell Erin everything, she needed to make sure she had the story straight, even though the story itself sounded so insane. Especially since it was so insane.
Erin arranged the sugar bowl, saucers and delicate China teacups onto a silver tray. “The Knights Templar? Seriously? How long have you been with them?”
“A long time. My dad’s the grandmaster. The order was officially destroyed by the Inquisition in 1312, but a few of the brotherhood escaped to England. Been here ever since, fighting the good fight.”
Erin shook her head. “It all sounds totally crazy, but with what just happened, I have to believe it, don’t I?”
“I wanted to keep you out of it, Erin. I’m sorry.”
Erin’s shoulders sank and she leaned over the worktop, the kettl
e steaming. “Tell me the truth. Am I just some errand, some mission of yours?”
“You’re more than that, Erin.” It was the truth, just not the whole truth.
And Erin knew. The accusation was in her gaze, the sense of betrayal and the disappointment. She’d let Billi into her damaged life and this was her reward. Neither of them wanted to admit it, they both wanted the lie to remain, that she and Billi were close, that they could depend on each other and, maybe, there was more.
But there wasn’t. Billi didn’t know when she’d decided it, perhaps only now with Erin’s accusatory gaze, but after she’d dealt with Reggie that was it. She would be out of Erin’s life for good. Erin didn’t deserve to have her life tainted by her. Billi was damaged goods and Erin needed healing. She didn’t need friends like Billi.
She should stick to her own. Templars with Templars. The other squires were good enough company, weren’t they? So what if the only thing in their lives was the order, sometimes you didn’t get a choice in these things. Mixing with outsiders risked bringing harm to those outsiders and what real friend did that? The best show of friendship, of love even, was to leave Erin alone, for good.
Erin finished making the tea and put the tray down on the low coffee table. She pulled up a stool and sat opposite, despite the sofa being big enough for four. Billi got it. Erin didn’t want to be close to her. Fair enough, she couldn’t blame Erin for that. Billi picked up the cup. The aroma was light and peaceful. She sipped and her tastebuds tingled. It was time to come clean. “Your great-grandfather, Reginald FitzRoy, dabbled in the occult. He found out things during his time in Mesopotamia during the First World War that gave him, for the want of better words, magical powers. He joined a secret society called the Ouroboros. Like-minded men who were interested in finding the secrets of immortality.”
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