The Templar's Curse

by Sarwat Chadda

  “That’s not so helpful. When will that be?”

  “We’ll know when it happens.” He faced Brigid again. “Who else do we face?”

  Brigid spoke again, there were no words Billi could understand, but Faustus winced. “Shit. The asakku.”

  “Again?”

  “They are heralds to the Anunnaki. The Old Ones wouldn’t enter our universe without sending a few minions to scout ahead. Reggie’s an occultist and they act as the go-betweens.”

  Billi put her hand on her sword hilt. “But now I’ve got this. How many?”

  “That’s a third question.” His fingers had made their way from shoulder down to the final band on his wrist. “I’m not going to waste it.”

  “Then what?”

  Faustus changed his hand gesture into the Karana Mudra, the symbol of release, or expulsion. “What can I do to free you, Brigid?”

  So that was it. There was more she would have wanted to know about what lay ahead, but this was Faustus’s show… and fair enough. Brigid couldn’t stay like this. She deserved to be free and go… wherever there was to go when life was over.

  But Brigid, or whatever remained of her, wasn’t done. She turned toward Billi and there was nothing but hate.

  “Don’t go there, Brigid,” warned Billi.

  They’d been enemies in life, but it had been a banal hatred, petty. Brigid had resented Billi’s intrusion into her clique and wanted Erin all to herself. But look how that had turned out…

  “No!” yelled Faustus.

  Brigid hissed as she threw herself at Billi. Her brokenness didn’t stop her. She reached out with fractured and broken fingers and stumbled toward Billi her body unnaturally re-angled with bones piercing her flesh.

  Billi thought she could just sweep Brigid’s arms aside but it was like hitting wood. Then the ragged, bone-splintered fingers were around her throat.

  Brigid slammed her against the rock. Billi stabbed with her knife but there was nothing worth damaging. The organs, what remained, were dead and the heart had long stopped pumping. Other, darker energies infested Brigid and mere steel wasn’t going to do it.

  “Let her go!” Faustus clamped his arm across Brigid and tried to pull her off. But she was immovable, it was as if she was part of the rock itself.

  Black spots invaded Billi’s vision. Her chest ached as it couldn’t grab any air but worse was the look in Brigid’s accusing eyes. Everything had been fine until she’d come along. Billi was the foul thing that had poisoned Erin against her. Billi was the catalyst.

  Brigid’s spirit, with only a loose hold upon her body, began to invade Billi. She was trying to possess her, as spirits did. They wanted life, wanted to hang on any which way they could.

  Billi glimpsed the last of Brigid’s life.

  She’d giggled when the others had painted her with the symbols and patterns. She could feel the brushes tickling her even now. She’d stood barefoot and in nothing but her underwear while Erin had directed the other two. She remembered how Erin had looked at her, with the barely repressed excitement, and desire. They’d skirted around each other for years, but Erin had changed in the last few weeks. Her boldness had excited her.

  This was all a game, and that added to her anticipation. Now that bitch Billi SanGreal was out of the picture it would be back to how it had been, but better.

  Only when they’d tied her hands had she stopped giggling. Suddenly it wasn’t funny. She demanded she be untied and that was when Erin had hit her. Not a slap, but a solid, hard fist in her guts that almost made her puke. She’d collapsed and lain there gasping, and confused. And frightened. She wanted to know what they were doing but no one spoke. There was some terrible agreement between Erin, Phoebe and Ardhan that she hadn’t been part of and now she was no longer part of their clique, but their victim. All the silly stories about the occult, the Old Ones and sacrifices had become brutally real.

  Brigid lay on the cold stone, curled up, tears rolling down her face, begging her friends to stop their game. She didn’t like it anymore. But these were strangers. When Erin had touched her, the way she’d touched her, had been sickening. The knowingness in her gaze perverse. This wasn’t the Erin she thought she knew.

  They dragged her by her hair and whenever she resisted the blows came. Not mean slaps but vicious punches delivered with enthusiasm and expertise. By the time they were outside Brigid hardly felt the cold rain nor the stones cutting her bare feet. But when she saw where she was being taken she fought. She’d never known she had such strength, so much passion and savagery. She screamed and bit deep, drawing blood from Phoebe’s hand. She even head-butted Erin when she got too close. The blow to her jaw meant nothing, her fury was too hot. But there were three of them and she was knocked over. Phoebe and Ardhan grabbed a leg each while Erin lifted her by her shoulders and they swung her back and forth at the cliff top’s edge. She screamed and screamed.

  Yet as they released her and she tumbled down towards the sea, her last thought was how all this was Billi’s fault.

  Then she’d struck the rocks.

  Billi couldn’t get her hand to the sword. Strapped across her back and wedged between her and the rocks she struggled in the creature’s iron grip, her windpipe getting steadily squeezed. She grabbed the rocks either side and lifted her knees against her chest. She kicked out.

  Brigid stumbled back, her grip broken. She flailed, hissing and clawing still. Brigid disappeared over the edge and her last look was of impotent fury, her broken lips mouthing a curse.

  Faustus looked over the edge. He was praying. Billi joined him and looked below. But Brigid was gone.

  The sea frothed and great white-mounted waves beat against the moonlit cliffs and washed over the rock teeth clustered at the bottom, as if some leviathan was rising out of the ancient waters to devour the land.

  That was it. The sea had taken her already.

  “She didn’t deserve that,” said Faustus.

  He was sorry for Brigid. Of course he was. Billi wasn’t. She’d fought too many ghosts and spirits by now to want to remember what they had been: alive. Alive and with simple, obvious hopes and envies. She should feel sorry, but she couldn’t spare tears. If she started she would never stop.

  Billi knelt beside Faustus, watching the tears run freely. He wasn’t made for this life, but had come, nevertheless. That made him braver than her. While he had courage she just had a brutal nature. That was the only way to survive. Wasn’t it? Billi gazed at her dagger, still clutched in her hand, the blade smeared with Brigid’s blood. She wiped it off on her trousers. There, all trace of Brigid was gone.

  She looked up. Not far now and the climb looked easier, but that was a trap to get climbers cocky. Just concentrate on every hold until —

  The tremor started from above. Small stones tumbled down, bouncing off one surface and then another, rattling against each other. Billi pressed herself against the rock face and pulled Faustus beside her. The slab they were standing on began to sway, and crack.

  The whole boulder was breaking free. “Jump!” shouted Billi over the din of more breaking rock. She launched herself to another ledge, one that looked more solid, and sheltered.

  “Billi!”

  She spun just as the slab cracked. Faustus scrabbled for purchase but the rocks around him were shearing off in great sheets. He began sliding down.

  “Faustus!” She couldn’t do anything but hold on. The din grew thunderous, but it was more that falling rock. The sound came from a deep void. It was an echo from somewhere dark and cold. Then, thankfully, the rumbling stopped. A few small pebbles pattered past her, but Billi turned around and gazed down the now shattered cliff. “Faustus? Are you there?”

  No, no, no. That would be too cruel, for him to go so pointlessly. Come on, Faustus.

  Then she saw him, a dozen metres below, crouched amongst the boulders. He shook off the shards of stones and wiped the blood off his brow. “Nothing serious.
”

  “Hang on. I’m coming down,” said Billi.

  “Forget it. You’re on a timetable. I’ll catch up. Somehow.” He looked around, searching for a route up. “And do you hear them? Their cry?”

  “I heard something.”

  “The Anunnaki are at the door, Billi. Won’t be long till Reggie turns the key and opens it right up. You have to stop him. Any way you can.”

  She knew what he meant. They were running out of time, and options. Maybe it was better without him. There were dirty deeds to be performed, dirty and brutal.

  She got up. What else was there to do? She turned to face the rock and began climbing. She carried on, because that was who she was. Hand over hand. Crawling higher and higher, eyes on the prize, that final black silhouette and the sky above. Up and up she went. Then her hand grabbed hold of a wet, thick tuft of grass. She didn’t pause for a prayer of thanks, or even a sigh of relief. Instead she hauled herself up the last metre to stand at the top of the cliff. She wiped the rain from her face.

  The sea-ward wall of Hollburgh had long since collapsed. There had been no invaders from the North Sea for over a thousand years. There was a low lip of pitted and weathered stone, the cracks blooming with weeds and a wind-bent tree hung perilously on the narrow strip of ground between the wall remains and the air. Its branches creaked and seemed to beckon her in.

  Billi buckled the sword-belt back around her waist and drew the Templar sword. The heavy steel settled in her palm, the moonlight caught upon its razor edge. It was old but as deadly as the day it had been forged. Billi started climbing over the low, broken wall.

  There was work to do.

  CHAPTER 28

  Most of the castle lay in ruins. The original keep was a pair of walls and a few spiral stairs that led nowhere. Billi crossed through a low doorway into the keep’s roofless interior. The stone floor-slabs were cracked and weeds grew between them and yet the walls remained mighty, the stones remembered their glorious, noble past. The fireplace remained and Billi could almost smell the odour of the fat pigs that would have roasted over the flames and the vast slabs of beef that would have been fed to the first FitzRoy and his companions. He would have gazed out at this same view. A mercenary from Normandy who’d tossed his lot in with William in a desperate bid for the English throne. The ancient clash of steel rang in Billi’s ears.

  What would he say, seeing her tonight? Determined to end his thousand-year line?

  What was happening to Erin? Had Reggie destroyed her already, leaving a shell of flesh and that too was about to be abandoned when he completed the ritual and transferred his soul, once and forever, to Ivan.

  Over my dead body.

  Crows nested within the nooks. Their glossy black eyes watched her cross, a wraith of ruin, steel in hand and the desire for dark deeds in her heart. There was a coldness settling within her that had nothing to do with the rain and wind.

  The tremor started slowly, gently. The small loose stones bounced and rattled against each other and the stubby trees that had found root amongst the ruins swayed. The vibrations rose up through her soles, making her tingle to her fingertips. Then the sound of heavy stones grinding, of mortar cracking and flagstones shifting grew steadily louder. If was as if a dragon, held in the catacombs below, was stirring from hibernation and stretching out within the confines of his old prison, disturbing the foundations.

  Billi backed away as dust fell from the arch above her, its keystone cracked and shifted a few centimetres.

  The noise grew louder. But it wasn’t a noise, it was a vibration, a feeling. It was a thrum on a cosmic string as some entity plucked at the threads of reality. A wave of nausea crashed against her, passing deep into her guts, a dizzying sensation that was like suffering a hang-over while spinning on a funfair whirly-gig. The ground swayed as the castle around her seemed to wobble and bend.

  And then it stopped. Stopped as if it had never happened. No more movement, the sense of sickness entirely gone. The ground steady and the horizon still.

  The Anunnaki were beating at the door between their plane of existence and hers. Soon it would open, or be smashed.

  Her ears pricked at the sound of sobbing from ahead. Grip tight around her hilt, sticking to the shadows, Billi advanced through the ruins towards it. She stepped around a puddle, peering into the darkness, and saw a figure curled up in a nook.

  “Ardhan?”

  The figure looked up. “Billi?”

  Ardhan curled up even more. Trembling through and through. “Please don’t hurt me.”

  She wanted to. She wanted to take it out on someone, but Ardhan wasn’t her enemy. She wasn’t sure exactly what Ardhan was, but right now he was terrified beyond his wits. Billi, a little roughly, grabbed his arm and lifted him to his feet. “Where’s Erin?”

  But Ardhan was deep in his own misery. “I didn’t think it would actually happen, Billi. I thought it was all play-acting. But she did it, she really did it. She pushed Brigid over the cliff. I heard her scream, and I heard…” he sobbed, “… and I heard her land. It was a hideous sound. That crunch as she hit the rocks.”

  Billi tightened her grip. “Where is Erin?”

  “Help me, please. I need to get away. I don’t want anything to do with this, not anymore.”

  “Where. Is. Erin?”

  Ardhan searched around frantically, lost in his own terror. “I told Phoebe to run away! I told her, Billi. Why didn’t she save herself?”

  Oh. That didn’t sound good. “What happened to Phoebe? Tell me so I can help you. Protect you.”

  “Protect me? You can’t. No one can. Come with me. We can run away right now! We’ll be safe. We just need to get away!”

  “How, Ardhan? You can’t cross the bridge.”

  Ardhan screamed and broke free. Tears streaked down his face leaving black trails from his kohl and he scratched at his bare arms until he drew blood. “We need to run away! You can’t save her!” He shoved Billi away and turned, running deeper into the ruins.

  “Come back, Ardhan!”

  She chased, following the cries and sobs but couldn’t make sense where they were coming from, they bounced from one wall to the next until Billi was well and truly lost. Then it was suddenly silent. One last cry echoed through the ruins but was swiftly carried off across the sea.

  Damn him! Where has he gone?

  “Ardhan! Just wait! Ardhan…” Billi waited, forcing her breath back under control as she tried to penetrate the gloom with the little moonlight there was. Now was not the time to rush down through a darkened castle. “Speak to me, Ardhan.”

  She took a step, and stopped. A stench turned her stomach. It was a foul miasma that contaminated the air itself. Flies buzzed around her.

  “Ardhan…?” It was barely louder than her own heartbeat.

  The stench grew thicker. Globules of thick, oily liquid bubbled along the walls, spreading out like blood stains, and leaving glossy black trails down the ancient, weathered stone. Rats poured out of the cracks in the walls and out from between the flagstones. Dozens, squealing and writhing with their fur covered in this bile. They fought, frenzied with bloodlust, biting and ripping at each other, and themselves. More spewed from the cracks and tore through the mortar until the walls boiled with screaming, slick-coated vermin.

  The thrum deepened, shaking her in her bones. The rats devoured each other, gouging out eyes with their yellow claws, tearing off tails and ripping off flesh and fur, leaving bloody, twitching half-eaten bodies over the floor.

  Ardhan cried out from the darkness. “No, please! Take her, take her! I serve you! Erin said we had a deal! Take —”

  Then he was silent. No gasp, no cry, no final scream, just silence. And that was even worse. Ardhan was gone.

  Billi switched to a double-handed grip, but against what? The rats dashed over her boots and clawed at her trousers before fleeing away, their claws skittering on the old stones.

  Her ears
ached as the noise drove hard into her mind. The bile was now pooling, and spreading across the flagstones. The ominous pulsing reached deeper inside. Then she realised what it was.

  A heartbeat. Low, ponderous, steady and inhuman.

  And coming from the far archway.

  A shadow fell upon the distant wall, cast by the moonlight. It swelled, lumpen, malformed with peculiar, ill-formed limbs. A guttural snarl shook the dusty air. Each dripping footstep brought it closer to the corner and into view.

  Billi hissed a prayer through her gritted teeth. She tightened her grip on her sword, as if it was her only salvation and yet, lurking in her heart was an awful, rising dread. She’d fought devils, faced down angels and nightmares from humanity’s earliest nightmares but this… this was older. An unfamiliar dread rose from the primordial depths of her soul. Something so old, so fundamental to her humanity that she couldn’t breathe.

  There were beings that even Hell feared.

  Billi took another step back. She should retreat, this wasn’t a fight she could win.

  But that meant leaving Erin, Ivan and…

  … and Templars do not retreat.

  “Deus vult.” Billi planted her feet firmly, and drew back her steel.

  The being hesitated. Its fingers curled as its massive heartbeat faltered. The thing took a step back, into the quivering shadows, the heartbeat fluctuating wildly. The shadows deepened around it, cloaking it even as its heartbeat faded until… until…

  There was darkness, and silence.

  CHAPTER 29

  She entered the staircase. It wound downwards in a tight spiral barely wide enough for her. More tremors came in undulating waves. The temperature rose and dipped and the stones sweated one moment, were covered in frost the next. The treads themselves were covered in some weird slime that seeped up through the joints and cracks. But it was the pounding in her head that threatened to rip her mind apart. Billi gritted her teeth to stop herself from screaming but the pain was becoming unbearable. Her skin felt as if it was being stroked by burning brands and the thick, gagging smells invading her throat were suffocating, each breath was a pitiful sip, as agonizing as swallowing ground glass.