The knives flashed one more time and then dripped with dark crimson as he toppled forward onto the blades, his severed neck bubbling with the last of his escaping breath. A cry of rejoicing went up from the crowd.
“We have bathed the lands with the blood of our enemies and drenched the spot through which they will emerge with his blood. Come now! Return and delay no longer!”
The dark Priest’s words had barely reached the ears of the congregation when a sudden explosion of heat and flame erupted from the middle of the ring of figures, engulfing everyone in foul choking sulphurous smoke and knocking them all to the ground. About the blasted trees and crumbled foundations of the broken fortress, crows leapt from foot to foot before suddenly tumbling and falling like stones to the floor, struck instantly dead.
As the sulphur clouds lifted and the flames died, the High Priest staggered wearily to his feet, the left side of his face blistered and smoking from where he had been struck by the explosion of flame. He stared hard at the spot out of which he had expected the demons to appear, his body slumped in failed resignation.
“Damnation,” he growled, like a curse.
“Where are they?” someone asked, looking about the scorched earth. Fireflies of light fizzed and flared in the circle, spiralling above the dead body of the six-fingered sacrifice, climbing higher with every passing second. “Have they come through?”
“Have they come amongst us?” another voice asked.
“I see nothing! There is nothing!”
“No,” growled the High Priest, his dark eyes fixed on the lifeless body slumped across the now scorched ribbon. “The sacrifice was not enough. Twenty thousand fallen on this battlefield. It has proved to be not enough to raise them from the Abyss. But something has come through.”
“How do you know? How can you tell?”
A sudden chill wind gathered among the stunned audience, tugging at their robes and gowns, crackling and spinning the last of the lights like flying embers from a dying fire. But as quickly as the wind rose, it fell away and at once the deathly calm of the battlefield returned.
“Can you not feel it?” muttered the High Priest, his burnt face impassioned. “A change has come. Something has come through. Something beneath which the wheels of oblivion shall turn.”
From a ramshackle wooden house on the rocky ridge, the agonised screams of a woman shattered the quiet of the Tatra Mountain night.
“Push, Zofia!” implored the giant of a man between her feet. “Push! Our child, he is almost through!”
The mother-to-be bit hard into her bottom lip and pushed with all the strength her body could muster. At once she felt the child slip out of her and with it the pain.
“It’s a boy!” cried the huge man, cradling the bloodied child within his huge hands. “It’s a boy, Zofia! It’s a boy!”
“My darling,” Zofia wept, reaching out to take the child from him and bundling the tiny infant to her breast. “He is beautiful!”
“He is like his mother!”
“He is strong, like his father Eryk!” Zofia shot back, tears of joy and love in her eyes. “Whatever shall we call him?”
“He is a rare and beautiful thing, precious like a bloodstone,” said Eryk, placing a hand upon his son’s head. “Poldek! We will call him Poldek, after the gemstone he embodies. Poldek Tacit, born of compassion and generosity!”
PART ONE
“And they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the Devil, having been held captive by him to do his will.”
2 Timothy 2:26
ONE
TUESDAY, JULY 13TH, 1915. NOW.
ROME. ITALY.
The Inquisitor knew he was going to die. He had known from the moment they found him. Those who pursued him, he knew how thorough they were. How they could never give up. After all, he had been taught by them. He was one of them. They had shared the same faith. Now those who pursued him were dark imitations of their once proud selves, from the corruption of their minds to the hard looks they wore.
The Darkest Hand. Its reach had grown long.
Inquisitor Cincenzo knew they would catch him and they would kill him, after which they would remove every memory of him, every scrap of evidence about him from the face of the earth.
Root and branch. That had always been the Inquisition’s way. They never left anything to chance. And since the Darkest Hand had infiltrated that most devout and secret of organisations within the Catholic Church, Cincenzo knew they had grown strong enough to stop at nothing to ensure that their plans went unchallenged.
He’d thrown himself from the top-floor window of the safe house two heartbeats after they had smashed their way in, catching the lower edge of the apartment terrace beneath in a shower of glass and dropping the remaining ten feet to the street below. There had been more of them waiting for him there, just as he’d expected.
He caught the Inquisitor closest to him in the throat, the man going down choking, his palms tight to his ruptured larynx. A cloaked figure flashed to his right and promptly buckled as Cincenzo delivered an almighty kick between his legs. A punch was thrown from behind and Cincenzo parried it, tearing at his assailant’s eyes, raking his face. The point of a staff was hurled out of nowhere and the Inquisitor caught it and thrust it back, battering the attacker in the mouth, breaking teeth. Moments later, a grenade was in his own hand and the alley rocked with light and smoke, blinding eyes and shattering senses, disorienting all caught within its blast.
In the melée of confusion and noise, Cincenzo seized the opportunity and fled, his head down, his arms pumping, sprinting hard into the city, running with every ounce of strength he possessed. He spun out of the swirl of smoke in the alleyway into the red-grey lamp-lit streets of Rome, his Inquisitor’s robe rippling in his slipstream. And as he ran, he thought about the events that had led him to become who he was, an enemy, to be murdered by those he once called allies, with whom he had worked and prayed and killed.
It had begun with the rumours months ago, the private murmurings in the inquisitional hall at the end of assignments, the talk of a darkness growing at the heart of the Vatican. At first Cincenzo ignored his fears, knowing it would be wrong to question. It was simply his duty to do as he was instructed and turn his eyes from things which troubled or concerned him. He was young and naive, only recently promoted to full inquisitional status. He put his doubts down to the rigours of the job, the horrors that he witnessed on a daily basis. The suspicions he now carried with him at all times, the questions without answers, the doubts without resolution, he buried as deep within him as he buried his blades in the bodies of this enemies.
Cincenzo had known that to talk to other Inquisitors of his growing unease would have brought down unwelcome questions from those who ruled the Inquisition. They never took kindly to the news that one of their own was having concerns. Concerns, questions, they were meant to have been crushed out of you by your master during your training years, not carried forward into adulthood when you became an Inquisitor.
But for the man now pursued through the night-time streets of Rome, the questions which troubled him, the rumours which confronted him, had never been explained as an acolyte. So instead he did what he knew would bring him damnation anyway. He went looking for answers.
Cincenzo had never expected to find them, or at least not answers that would satisfy him. But he had found something during his digging, and what he’d found had terrified him more than any of the doubts that had occupied his troubled mind.
He careered through the streets of the capital, sweeping into wide courtyards full of people and laughter, plunging into narrow empty alleyways which smelt of rot and stale water, going where his instincts led him, just running, never looking back, sweat stinging his eyes, the warm spiced Roman dusk air filling his nose, clawing at his lungs. His legs felt leaden and dead, but still he ran, never stopping, never resting, still fighting as he’d always been taught to do. A war without end.
He had to get w
ord to them, to tell them what he had learnt, to warn those few who, like him, had also sensed the darkness and banded together in secret to face it. To warn them that history was repeating itself, only this time their attempt could not fail.
That the Darkest Hand had already secured a death grip upon the world.
The young Inquisitor threw himself into the long Via dei Pettinari and, for the first time since he had taken flight, hesitated, drawing to a retching coughing halt, cursing and wondering if he should turn round and take another route. Behind him he heard the closing rap of feet on the cobbled streets and the decision was made for him. He flung himself on, the tread of his boots biting hard on the flagstones, his eyes firm on the way ahead.
Thirty paces in and he dared to hope. It seemed that no one lay in wait for him within that narrow way, the only sound he could hear beside his own snatched breathing being that of his pursuers’ boots pounding behind him. Cincenzo could detect the tightness of breath in their throats, the coarse mutter of exhaustion on their tongues. And, for a moment, he knew he was outrunning them, they were failing, foundering, falling behind with every stride.
Belief stirred like prayer within him and a new strength returned. Doorways and shop fronts flashed by as he hurled himself out of the narrow street and into Lungotevere dei Tebaldi beyond, not stopping for an instant as he powered across it to Ponte Sisto bridge. His feet barely touching the grey cobbles as he ran, he flew up the bridge, then drew to a sudden stop.
A man, long presumed dead, stood at the apex of the bridge waiting for him. The hooded figure smiled and dropped his hand to the holster on his thigh, revealing the black enamelled grip of a revolver hanging there.
Behind Cincenzo, the shadowy figures charged from the grimy dark of Via dei Pettinari and formed a ragged line along the bridge, barring any chance of escape. The only way on was now through the man with the revolver, and the exhausted Inquisitor knew there would be little chance of managing that.
“So,” the man at the top of the bridge spoke, withdrawing the revolver casually and shaking his head. His accent suggested he was Italian, but any joy and light within the language had long been crushed out of it. He clicked his tongue against his teeth and took a step forward. “You really have caused no end of trouble. What is the first rule of the Inquisition?”
The question was asked as a mocking jest and Cincenzo hesitated, looking back at the line of his brethren slowly closing in on him and then once more to the hooded man with the revolver. “Never question the faith,” he replied, as one who had been instructed all his life.
The man nodded. “Never question the faith. And yet, what have you done at every turn?” He took another step closer. “I’ll tell you what you have done. You’ve been … troublesome.”
“You’re not part of the faith!” Cincenzo spat back, edging slowly to the side of the bridge and considering a drop into the dark waters below. “I know what you are! I know everything.”
The hooded man shook his head, his eyes narrowing to slits. “Everything, do you?”
And Cincenzo chuckled, a joyless final laugh. “I know what you’re planning. What was done before. How it failed. What you hope to achieve this time.”
Cincenzo looked down into the flowing Tiber below. A thirty-foot drop. The fall wouldn’t kill him. The difficulty would be dropping over the side before he was shot. “You will not succeed,” he told the hooded man, with something approaching victory in his tone. “You may be legion, but our numbers are growing too. Your presence is black, but behold, there is a dawn coming, and with it all evidence of your existence will be expunged.” He peered back at the bridge’s edge, surreptitiously creeping ever closer.
“And you talk too much,” the man growled. He lifted the revolver and fired. The side of the Inquisitor’s head tore open and he was thrown backwards, somersaulting over the edge of the stone bridge into the river below with a tumultuous splash. The man peered into the waters below. “And who ever said it failed the first time?”
On the path beside the river below, two figures in an embrace looked up through the murk of dusk in shock.
TWO
ROME. ITALY.
The heady scent of rose escorted the Priest and Nun as they walked beside the Tiber. By chance, their hands brushed together and Sister Isabella looked across at the man, still dressed in his black cassock, and smiled, tugging absently at the folds of her own gown, revealing a little more skin of her neckline. They stopped and turned to look at each other. She could hear the dry swallow of the man’s throat in the warm quiet of the evening, and pressed home her advantage, fluttering her dark eyelashes while playing with the red rings of hair that hung on her shoulder.
The Priest’s eyes widened and he swallowed again, clamping and unclamping his hands together, fighting with his private demons. A small red tongue ran across his lips before he swallowed yet again, looking away to the river like a doomed man waiting to be thrown in, perhaps thinking he could cast himself in and have his sins washed away. Salvation, he knew, lay away from here, away from the allure of this woman, but he recognised the salvation of a sweeter kind stood next to him. He looked back at her and started to speak, but stopped, rubbing his sweating hands on his cassock, his eyes once more on the river.
He remembered the words of St Augustine, feeling like Adam caught within the Garden of Eden. But here, in the shadow of the Ponte Sisto bridge, he looked at Isabella and found himself ensnared by an even greater temptation.
“Father Morritez,” Isabella soothed, running her hand over her right breast so that the nipple hardened through her blouse, “do I not fascinate you? Do I not intrigue and tantalise?”
“You do,” he muttered, trembling slightly. His hands shook and he knotted them in front of himself. “You do.”
Isabella smiled softly and raised her delicately sculpted chin to reveal the soft pale white of her neck, the hint of pink on her chest.
“Mercy me, you do,” Morritez mumbled, reaching forward and taking her fingers gently with a sweaty hand, no longer able to resist touching her. “You do,” he repeated, squeezing her hand. “I have seen you often, in the corridors, in the squares about the city. You’re a thing of beauty, surely in God’s own image? I’ve never looked on anything so lovely.”
The Sister’s eyes widened and she levelled them at the man. “You blasphemous hound, Father Morritez!” she teased gently. “A woman in God’s own image?” She tutted quietly and placed a hand over his, encouraging him to move closer. He did, with no more resistance.
“Forgive me!” he muttered, as much to his Lord as to Isabella, before leaning forward to kiss her. He was only a few inches away when a gunshot cracked from the bridge above them and a body tumbled from it, falling into the river. It hit the Tiber with a splash, and before the waves reached the river’s edge Isabella was at the quayside steps leading down to the water.
“Giovanni!” she cried to the shadows beyond where Father Morritez stood, both terrified and bemused. Another Priest was already hurrying out from the hideout where he had been crouched, watching and waiting for the Father’s indiscretion to be drawn out by the Sister. A sash of vivid blues and greens, colours of the Chaste, was tied round his middle. Isabella was in the cool water and wading towards the body floating past, when she ordered him to seize the errant Priest.
“What are you doing, Isabella?” Giovanni cried, one hand clutched firm to the flummoxed Father’s arm, his other held out to her beseechingly. But instantly his eyes were drawn back to the bridge and the figures hurrying down the stone steps alongside it. “Isabella!” Giovanni called, but a shot rang out and he went down with a grunt.
Father Morritez leapt and recoiled in horror, dropping to his haunches, his hands held tight to his ears like a soldier manning an artillery post. A second shot caught him in the back of the neck and he slumped twitching to the flagstones of the walkway beside Giovanni, blood pouring from the wound.
Isabella dived beneath the dark waters, grabbing h
old of the body from the bridge as she went. The side of the man’s face had been blasted open, his wide staring eyes tracing a route upwards towards the stars. Bullets zipped and fizzed through the water around her as she kicked for the far bank. Isabella knew this was no Sicilian mafia. They were drilled, armed, indiscriminate. The mafia was many things, but it wasn’t so conspicuous or so brazen in its operations.
As she reached the far side of the river bank, she was suddenly aware that the man’s lips were moving, mouthing silent words. Amazingly he still clung onto life.
“What is it?” cried Isabella to the man, as another hail of bullets rippled the waters around her. She clasped him tightly, the brooch at the front of his robe coming away in her hand. “What are you trying to say?”
Breathlessly the man mouthed the same word over and over. A name. And with a final effort, a sound was pushed behind the breath.
“Tacit,” Inquisitor Cincenzo said, the life slowly draining from him. “Tacit. Tacit.”
Stunned, Isabella let go of the dead man, his body sinking fast beneath the surface of the river as another shower of bullets clattered about her. She stretched for the cold stone of the far bank and held onto it like a lost lover. Her feet touched the riverbed and she sprang onto the bank, rolling over and over the cobbles as more rounds sprayed around her, drawing sparks as they struck the stones.
She sank into the shadows of the far side of the walkway and lay still for a moment, trying to steady her nerves and collect her shattered thoughts on what she had stumbled into, what the Inquisitor had said with his final dying breath.
The Fallen Page 2