The Fallen

by Tarn Richardson

  “Make sure our followers fight, and fight hard, but target the soldier and his bitch especially. Kill them, but let Tacit and Sister Isabella live. Let them both go. Let them discover what they must. The prophecy is well advanced. They cannot stop what has begun and they will not know that their role is caught up within it until it is too late.” He looked again at the water’s surface, as if it held a fascination, and smiled, watching the sun shatter into a thousand shards across the ripples. “And by then Tacit will be as irretrievably tied to the darkness that is coming as the rest of us. In the meantime, I will carry out the second ritual.” Georgi looked up and smiled, his eyes flashing eagerly. “By doing so, we will not only be a step closer to their returning, but will also have rid ourselves of one of the problems which so concerns you.”

  SIXTY ONE

  ROME. ITALY.

  “They’re here!” Tacit cried, his voice like a bark in the silence of the dreadful room. “Inquisitors!”

  Trouble had found them, the eruption of brief gunfire confirming his fears. He knew that the three Inquisitors left waiting for them downstairs were now dead.

  Kell pushed past him to look himself. From the window he could see a figure holding a lantern cross the cobbles at speed. Tacit strode past the grim discovery of the hanging Sister, checking the corridor beyond for movement. “Do you know if there’s another way out of here?” he called to Kell.

  “I don’t,” replied Kell urgently, taking out his own gun and stepping alongside. “Only one way to find out. You go right, I go left?”

  Sandrine stood between them, her face determined. “Then let us waste no time!” she said, and Henry at once knew what she meant to do.

  “No, Sandrine! No!” he cried, stepping to block her path. “You can’t fight them. There’s too many of them.” Noises came from the depths of the convent, the sound of many boots climbing long creaking wooden staircases, armies of men scouting down dark corridors, all of them drawing nearer to their targets. “They’ll be prepared this time. They know what you are, after what happened before at the last safe house.” Tacit was peering both ways down the corridor. He vanished right, Kell going left, both trying to detect the sounds of the coming Inquisitors and the direction from which they were approaching. Sandrine tried to push past Henry, but he caught hold of her arm. “I’m not letting you do this.”

  But Sandrine laughed, a short cruel laugh of defiance, and followed it with a cold smile. “Stay here, with her,” she said, looking back at Isabella. “If they break through, take the window and climb to the roof.”

  She pulled herself free of Henry’s grip and prowled to the door, Henry trailing in her wake, trying to draw her back. She spun on him, a wild terrible look about her. At once his hand gripped unconsciously at the pendant at his neck.

  “Get out of here!” she half shouted, half growled at him, before turning back to the door and dropping to her knees. And then Henry did step back, no longer attempting to reason with her, knowing it was too late for negotiation, his heart dredged with fear and angst. His right shoulder hit the wall behind him and he grabbed hold of Isabella, navigating their way through the open door into the bathroom beyond, looking back desperately one final time to see Sandrine’s head lolling uncontrollably on her shoulders.

  He closed the door and stood against it.

  “Do you have it?” he asked Isabella urgently. She looked at him confused before she realised what he meant, dragging the pendant of Francis of Assisi out from under her top. “Good. Keep it on display at all times.” He rose his finger to his lips. “And keep quiet, for God’s sake, at least until she’s gone.”

  Gunfire and cries rattled the corridor outside the residence. A howl, horrible and vengeful, came from the chamber. Something rocked the corridor outside Malpighi’s room, and the cries and gunfire smashed together, a mangled and terrible cacophony.

  Inside the bathroom, Henry and Isabella held onto each other, their eyes, wide with fear and loss, filled with tears and focused on the door.

  SIXTY TWO

  ROME. ITALY.

  For a team of Inquisitors attempting to stalk an enemy on the upper floors of a monastery, they were making a hell of a racket. Tacit would have lamented their lack of procedure if it wasn’t for the fact they were now his enemy.

  He heard the first two Inquisitors long before they appeared on the stairs of the right-hand corridor down which he had run. He took their heads off with two clean shots from his revolver before they had even caught sight of him. The empty casings hadn’t even spun from the cylinder and hit the ground before he was down on one knee and fishing in a pocket for replacements.

  He threw a grenade two heartbeats later and immediately reloaded his six-shooter. Determined voices from the bottom of the stairs ordered a charge, before the bodies of the dead Inquisitors tumbled out of the black towards them, and promptly turned to panic the moment the grenade fell among them. The passageway rocked and filled with sound and smoke. Tacit rose and powered towards it, his revolver raised.

  Kell could feel his pulse in his throat as he reached the end of the left-hand corridor and flashed a look around its blind corner. It was empty, but below him he could hear sounds of inquisitional voices and boots, and he knew his kin were on the floor directly beneath him.

  He went forward, stooping down, both hands on the grip of his revolver for comfort and control, an explosion somewhere behind him seeming to rock the foundations of the building. A grenade had been thrown and instantly Kell knew Tacit had just raised the odds.

  Every third step, he paused and looked back over his shoulder to check he wasn’t being followed. The howling, which had begun in the room where Sister Malpighi hung, was growing louder and more protracted. He’d seen Sandrine change just once, and once was enough to last a lifetime. He’d killed a mountain of Hombre Lobo in his time without ever questioning his actions. But to see the beautiful Sandrine turn into one of those beasts, it turned his stomach to think of it.

  He pulled his own pendant of Assisi from out of his shirt and pressed on, more urgently now, looking to put some distance between himself and the half-wolf in case she choose to come his way. He’d pull the trigger and gun her down without a moment’s hesitation, but he knew it would wound him as much as it would her.

  A door in the right-hand side of the corridor burst open and two Inquisitors fell out of it. Kell fired and they hit the deck, seconds before two more rolled from the opening, their guns blazing. They too went down, clean shots through the heart.

  Kell opened the cylinder to his revolver and dragged the empty smoking rounds clear.

  It always hurt when she changed, the wrenching agony of her limbs as they popped, the screaming from her bones as they elongated and hardened, the eruption of hair from her skin, as if her body was being flayed by a thousand whips. But once a wolf, the pain instantly abated and was replaced with a renewed energy and dominance, a carnal desire to feed, to seek out enemies and feast upon their flesh.

  Sandrine smashed the door to Sister Malpighi’s room aside and sprang forward, the baleful howls from her lungs echoing like hell’s legion in the tiny corridor. She dashed right and flew down the stairs, catching the scent of stale alcohol and sweat and the compulsion to follow it, and the man she knew she detested the most.

  There were body parts covering the floor at the bottom of the stairs. Something resisted inside her, a desire to stay and feast, to try to sate her hunger. But an anger raged stronger inside of her, to pursue and kill, and she sniffed at the air and bounded with a withering cry along the right-hand corridor where the air smelt staler, shattering through the closed door at the end of it. A shout of alarm was thrown up the moment she powered out in an explosion of shattered flying wood, and the Inquisitors waiting there unloaded their arsenal of weapons on her.

  She tore into them, decapitating and disembowelling with ease, snapping and devouring in three dreadful mouthfuls any caught within her slavering bloody jaws.

  “Fall ba
ck!” cried the commander, and at once the Inquisitors tried to retreat. “And get silver!” But Sandrine came after them, her wrath made even more terrible by the taste of hot blood in her mouth and her belly.

  SIXTY THREE

  THE ITALIAN FRONT. THE SOČA RIVER. NORTHWEST SLOVENIA.

  The stars had come out and it was bitterly cold. This merely confirmed what Pablo already knew about the Carso. That it was an ungodly place. Unbearably hot during the day, so much so that beneath every seam of clothing skin was rubbed raw with the sweat. Fiendishly bitter at night so that the cold sunk into the very marrow of your bones.

  But despite the cold Pablo had to shit. He had felt the need for the last hour of walking. He’d eaten so little of the barren tasteless food since he had arrived at the foot of the mountain days ago. He was amazed there was anything in his system to push out.

  “Where are you off to?” asked Corporal Abelli, his green eyes glistening like jade in the firelight around which some of his unit were sitting and singing and drinking coffee.

  “To shit,” replied Pablo.

  “Take care. There was a sniper’s nest around here. That was what the forward contingent were saying.”

  Pablo swallowed, trying not to pay much notice to the warning. It was dark, too dark for a sniper he supposed, and he was not intending to go far. Just far enough away for a little privacy. He stepped to the edge of the light of the camp and circled around a boulder, behind which stretched the inky black nothingness of the sky and void of the western heavens. He stood for a moment watching and listening, thinking then that if a sniper did shoot him it would be a good place to die. And for that instant, with the pleasing mutter of fellow soldiers’ voices behind him and the crackle of fire, he felt something approaching peace, for the first time since he had crossed the Soča river.

  He unbuckled his trousers, bearing his cheeks to the biting cold, and sunk to his haunches, squatting close to the limestone rock. He could feel the heat of the stones touch his bare buttocks, scorched from the long day. He pushed in his guts, absently looking about the circle of rocks he had found. Down the mountainside he could hear the dull clamour of army camps along the valley, muttering voices, occasional flutters of laughter, the bang of metal and bray of mules. Beyond, the night was punctuated by rifle-fire, frequent cracks, like sharp hammers on stone, shooting blindly into the black, shooting at an enemy they could not see, warning them not to try and attack, for they were ready, with their worryingly low stocks of ammunition and abject morale.

  But there was something vaguely comforting about the miasma of sounds, a familiarity, a homeliness. A haven.

  Pablo finished and stood up, buckling his trousers as he peered out into the far dark edge of the clearing. He suddenly realised that he was being watched. He thought it strange, both that he hadn’t seen the figure watching him before, and that the person would choose to stand where he had, out in the open, unmoving, staring. There was vague outline of a gown around the bearded man who observed him at the very edge of where the light reached. At once, the young soldier thought him peculiar, and made to call out to him, but something made him falter, perhaps the way in which the man was watching him, saying nothing, just staring with his large dark eyes, almost red in the light from the camp behind Pablo.

  Regardless, Pablo went forward, just a step, and could no longer resist calling to him.

  “Hey there!” he shouted, taking another step into the dark towards the figure. But with every step, it seemed as if the figure was growing more faint. “Hey! What is the matter with you?” he said, striding quicker now in order to catch the man up. But Pablo realised that he had reached the sheer edge of the mountain, the ground before him giving way to the cool night air, and there was no one there, and nowhere for anyone to have gone.

  SIXTY FOUR

  ROME. ITALY.

  Inquisitor Kell kicked open the door to the chamber and scanned the room for movement. Nothing stirred and he stepped inside, his gun tight to his eye line. Something moved from his right and he fired before he had time to think, the Sister standing there going down with only the slightest of sounds, her hands clutched to her bleeding belly.

  Kell swore and rushed towards her, bundling her into his arms, moments before three Inquisitors poured from a swinging door onto him. His knife was in his hand, its point plunging deep under the ribcage of the leading Inquisitor before he had a chance to draw breath.

  Something struck Kell hard on the side of the head and the room swam, his vision blurring, as he wrestled his right hand free and fired twice, the Inquisitor on top of him tightening before toppling off.

  The third stabbed something into his guts and Kell kicked out, feeling his groin moisten and his left side go numb. The Inquisitor tumbled away and Kell found purchase enough to stand, firing twice more. The Inquisitor lay still in an expanding pool of blood on the floor around him.

  With that, an almighty bang sounded and something struck Kell in the stomach. He cursed and dropped a fist into the wound, the pain from it bending him double. His hand came away red.

  “Damn,” he muttered, slumping onto his knees before everything turned mottled and dark.

  Grand Inquisitor Düül stepped forward and took off Kell’s head with a single swing of his scimitar.

  “Find the others,” he hissed to the Inquisitors around him. He lifted his ear to the wild sounds from the monastery. “There’s a wolf lose in the building.” His eyes narrowed with surprise and disgust. “Load up with silver. Find the wolf and kill it. And find Tacit and bring him to me broken. But don’t kill him. That pleasure will reside with me alone.”

  SIXTY FIVE

  ROME. ITALY.

  Tacit’s revolver was smoking hot by the time he opened the cylinder yet again and ejected the spent rounds. He rooted in his pocket for new ones and found nothing but metal tubes of powdered acid. Three more Inquisitors ran at him and he popped the corks from the vials and threw the contents at his attackers with a wide arching arm, dropping as he did so, their fired rounds passing harmlessly overhead.

  He heard their screams as the powerful acid burned their eyes and ate through skin into bone in a matter of seconds, springing to his feet, his knife clenched firm in his hand. It was an act of mercy to silence their pained cries.

  Two Inquisitors appeared from an open door and Tacit threw the knife, sending one thudding back from where he had come, only the handle of the blade protruding from his ribs. The other Inquisitor leapt forward and quickly Tacit raised his hefty right, battering the Inquisitor’s lower jaw which shattered from the blow.

  Tacit paused, breathing hard, and turned his ear to the dreadful sounds of Sandrine somewhere in the building above him.

  Sandrine sensed that her hide was drenched in blood, hanging warm and heavy against her skin, matted in thickly clotted clumps. She spun on the pile of slaughtered bodies about her, searching for any more victims. Through the windows which ran along the side of the hall she could see that the moon was climbing.

  She bounded towards it, drawn irresistibly, the window bursting in a halo of glinting glass fragments, as she leapt through onto a wall outside. She stared straight up into the round pale face in the night sky, her eyes growing wide, filled with yellow luminescence. A madness festered in her mind, spreading like a cancer, polluting and infecting every avenue of her thoughts. She arched her back and howled. Within moments, the cry was answered and then answered again, more and more howls sounding all across the city, carrying the message of hate and rage and desire. Wolves rose out of the sewers and dark places of Rome and bounded into the streets and courtyards to seek out their hated enemy and to feast upon him.

  SIXTY SIX

  ROME. ITALY.

  Inside the monastery, Tacit had cleared the building of Inquisitors, as far as he could tell, and had gone back up into the upper floors. He kicked the bathroom door within Sister Malpighi’s residence off its hinges and immediately deflected the aimed rifle-butt with his right forearm. He wr
enched it free and pointed a finger at its wielder.

  “It’s me,” he growled, handing the weapon back to Henry.

  “Thank God. Is it –”

  “Over?” Tacit shook his head. “No, but the fighting has moved away from the monastery.” Isabella ran into his arms and he embraced her, pulling her close to him for a moment.

  “Kell?” asked Henry.

  Tacit grimaced and shook his head.

  “Sandrine?” he asked, even more urgently.

  “Not seen her. Come on,” Tacit said, stepping back out through the door of the bathroom and past the hanging body of the Sister for the final time. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “How did they know we were here?” asked Isabella.

  “We were ambushed.” Tacit pressed his fingers hard into his exhausted eyes. His head throbbed with noise and the early tightening screws of a hangover.

  “The Inquisition, they ambushed us,” said Henry, his words simmering with rage. “They knew we’d be here.”

  “Grand Inquisitor Düül,” muttered Tacit.

  “Who the hell is he?”

  “Someone to avoid. That’s who he is. They tracked us, with dogs.”

  “Are they still here?” asked Isabella, her hand to her neck.

  “No, they’ve moved off. Sounds like they’ve got more pressing problems to deal with.”

  “Such as?”

  At that moment howls tore across the skyline of Rome and Isabella had her answer.

  They ran down the corridor, following Tacit without hesitation or question. Henry looked back to the Sister’s room for a final time.