The Iscariot Sanction

by Mark Latham

  ‘One is far stronger than the other,’ Lillian said.

  ‘And the other is more numerous, and just as cunning. But answer me this, Agent Hardwick—which are you?’

  ‘Wolf or lion? Or human or vampire?’

  Cherleten only smiled.

  ‘I barely understand my own mind,’ she said, deciding that honesty was the best policy. ‘I hate de Montfort. I hold on to that hate as I hold on to my own self. But do I feel kinship with my fellow man? In just a short space of time, I feel I have lost all ties to my former life. I remember my mother and father, my brother… I feel loyalty to them still. But do I love them? I do not think I can love any more, Lord Cherleten. And even that terrible, desolate realisation stirs nothing within me.’

  ‘Loyalty is a fine start,’ said Cherleten. ‘It has kept me in the light, and from the darkness, though I have often trod a fine line, I confess, and a solitary one, too. I am not a good man, Agent Hardwick, but I am a loyal one. You will find, as I have, that our kind is predisposed towards meanness of spirit and even downright cruelty, but we are not incapable of free thought. The Knights Iscariot choose murder, chaos, and treason, just as I choose to oppose it.

  ‘I can offer you scant reassurance right now. But I tell you this: if hate is the only thing we can feel, and I believe you are right, at least for now, then you should well hold it tight. It is your talisman. You are still Lillian Hardwick; but you are defined now by what you are not, rather than by what you are.’

  ‘But you have been defined by what you are. Had you not been born the heir to a fortune… what would Lord Cherleten be then?

  Cherleten appeared amused at Lillian’s audacity. ‘That is a question, isn’t it? One that we need never know the answer to.’

  Lillian thought of the pallid, bestial monsters, stooped and clawed, that fed on the flesh of the deceased. Beneath Cherleten’s mask of rank and title and gentility, beneath the arsenic powder and formaldehyde, the red-haired wig, the teeth made of ivory… was he fending off degeneracy of the most heinous kind?

  ‘Are you still loyal to the Order, Agent Hardwick?’ Cherleten asked.

  ‘I am. Or, at least, I would rather be, than the alternative.’

  ‘That is good enough. For now.’

  ‘Good enough for what?’

  ‘To begin your training. You must learn to use your new abilities to your advantage. Your heightened senses, your strength and speed.’

  ‘I do not feel stronger,’ Lillian said.

  ‘But you are, relatively speaking. Your muscles do not feel fatigue like a human’s, and therefore you can perform feats beyond your normal endurance. To push too hard, however, is to do yourself an injury, although even that will heal rapidly enough. A gunshot or blade in a vital area will put you down, and hurt like bally-ho, but you will recover in time from most wounds. Just try not to get shot in the head or decapitated. Even those wretched ghouls can’t come back from that.

  ‘You have not had the opportunity to put yourself to any test as yet, but believe me, you will be surprised. Though you are not physically faster than you were, your reactions will make you appear so. You can see danger coming almost before it happens, and avoid it accordingly.’

  ‘I have seen the monsters dash out of the way of a bullet,’ Lillian mused.

  ‘Because they saw and heard your finger tighten on the trigger, and began to move even before your shot fired. You will do this too, with time and training.’

  ‘How much time will I need? How much longer must I spend here?’

  ‘It has been decreed that, for as long as Prince Leopold is in the hands of the enemy, we cannot take any unnecessary risks.’

  Lillian narrowed her eyes. ‘You mean, by releasing me, you may be unleashing a traitor into your midst.’

  ‘I did not say that.’

  ‘You did not have to, Lord Cherleten. And who issued this decree? You?’

  ‘If you must know, it was your father.’

  Anger grew inside Lillian again. It was good to feel something, she realised, even if it was rage.

  ‘Even now, he shepherds the Queen to safety,’ Cherleten went on. ‘We cannot know if the Knights Iscariot view the breakdown of negotiations as our fault—and therefore a declaration of war—or whether they planned the prince’s kidnap from the start. Either way, I doubt very much there will be an end to this matter any time soon. And in that time, you must remain here, although I am sure we can open up more of the facility for your use, so that you are not so confined. Trust me, my dear, I—’

  A low rumbling noise gave Cherleten pause. The electrical light hanging from the ceiling flickered, its chain jangling as it swayed gently. Outside the office, footsteps thudded.

  ‘Forgive me, Agent Hardwick, I must attend to this,’ Cherleten said, standing.

  Before he had even reached the door, a great, thudding boom sounded from somewhere above their heads, deafeningly loud. The room shook violently. One of the nurses on the ward screamed. Plaster dust fell from the ceiling. The light flickered twice more, and then went out, leaving only a paraffin lamp burning upon the desk.

  Cherleten flung open the office door, and Lillian followed him out into the ward, which had been plunged into near-darkness. Staff raced for the doors in panic, while three guards supervised their evacuation.

  ‘You,’ shouted Cherleten to the nearest guard. ‘Get them out of here!’ He indicated the Nightwatch, one male, one female, strapped to their invalid chairs and attached to strange, etheric machinery. They were too valuable to risk in the event of the armoury being compromised. Lillian wondered if the same could be said of her. Her question was quickly answered.

  ‘You two,’ Cherleten said to the remaining guards, ‘lock the doors behind us. No one comes in or out without my order, do you understand?’ He turned at once to Lillian. ‘I am sorry, Agent Hardwick. I trust you shall be comfortable until I return.’

  ‘You cannot leave me here!’ Lillian snapped. ‘What is happening?’

  ‘I do not know, but I mean to find out. Have no fear, this facility has never been compromised, nor do I imagine it shall be now.’

  EIGHTEEN

  De Montfort stood for the longest time with his forehead pressed against the cold stone, his hands before him, fingertips tracing the outline of ancient, weathered carvings. He breathed deeply, filling his nostrils with the smell of mildew and saltwater.

  ‘My lord? That is the last of it.’ The human serf shifted uneasily. De Montfort did not deign to look at him.

  An uneasy silence passed for a while, until finally Lucien de Montfort pushed himself away from the stone and opened his eyes. He held out a hand, and an attendant passed him his hat, gloves and cane. As he donned them, he at last turned to the serf. The man was grubby-faced and nervous. De Montfort preferred to use only imbeciles for tasks of such secrecy, but in this instance the duty was far too important to risk any failure. He had to rely instead on old-fashioned terror to persuade the humans to serve him, and this man—Mosby—was certainly terrified.

  ‘I expect this shipment to be at my estate by morning,’ he said.

  The man nodded with exaggerated enthusiasm. ‘It will, my lord, you can trust me.’

  ‘I am a man of my word, Mr. Mosby. Your wife will be waiting for you when the shipment is delivered.’

  ‘Thank you, sir. Bless you, sir.’

  ‘Go,’ de Montfort said, turning back to face the stone, waving a dismissive hand at the man. He heard his cousins hiss as they parted for Mosby, and Mosby’s fearful murmuring as he hurried from the graveyard.

  ‘Brave Ezekiel, first among the cadre,’ de Montfort said, and at once a black-clad hunter moved silently to his side, awaiting his command. De Montfort placed a hand upon the hunter’s shoulder. ‘I would entrust this task to none other, Ezekiel. See to it that Mosby arrives at Montfort Hall unmolested. With the blood that he carries, the Artist’s predictions will surely come to pass, and nothing must jeopardise that.’

  The hu
nter bowed, a low croak emitting from the back of its throat.

  ‘Oh,’ de Montfort added, ‘and you may take Mosby as payment. But he has done us a great service, so make it quick.’

  The hunter’s eyes flashed, and it slipped away, gliding through tendrils of low-hanging mist, with four of de Montfort’s ghouls trailing behind it. Before long, the heavily laden wagon was clattering away down the narrow cliff-side lane, its monstrous escort alongside it, leaving de Montfort with his last three hunters, standing sentinel amongst the crumbling headstones as waves crashed far beneath them.

  De Montfort delayed pulling on his second glove, instead reaching out to touch the stone once more. Almost as if responding to his presence, a chorus of muffled, agonised cries came from deep within the crypt.

  ‘O, I see the crescent promise of my spirit hath not set. Ancient founts of inspiration well thro’ all my fancy yet.’ De Montfort smiled to himself. He looked to his loyal hunters and said, ‘Entombed within these walls are those who would call themselves gods. And yet all that they are, all that they ever were, I have taken from them with science. They have nothing; they will die a slow death, in a tomb fit for a Nazarene. And with the blood of the ancients, the blood gifted to them by Judas Iscariot himself, we shall replace them. We shall not waste this gift as they did. We shall become gods worthy of the name. I could not have done this without you, my brothers. For your loyalty, my first decree as king shall be to raise you up, to restore to you that which was taken at birth by a cruel father. Soon your voices shall be heard, your will shall have meaning, and your vengeance shall be granted!’

  De Montfort’s voice carried upon the wind, raising against the waves that thundered far below the craggy hilltop upon which he had entombed his enemies. No, not enemies—aloof, capricious wampyr, impossibly ancient, who had not even been aware of his existence until he had come for them, one by one. With such a quantity of highborn blood at his disposal, his plan was almost at its fruition, but for a few more experiments. Only then could he challenge the Nameless King.

  His brothers, the hunters, chattered in their guttural clicks and croaks. De Montfort was uncertain whether he could truly lift the curse of their blood, but he would try, as he had promised. He would be as good as his word, for what was a gentleman without honour? He thought of Mosby’s wife, already dead at Montfort Hall. He had said she would be waiting for him, and so she would, albeit in a casket.

  ‘Come, ready the carriage,’ de Montfort said, pulling on his gloves and leaving the wails of the elders to fade behind him. ‘We have a long way yet to go.’

  * * *

  Lillian paced the length of the dark ward for the umpteenth time. At least she had her clothes, and no longer felt the cold. It would have been a rum business if she had been her old, warm-blooded self, stuck in an empty hospital ward with only a nightgown for comfort. She checked her thoughts and laughed ruefully at the darkness. It was not in her nature, then or now, to play the optimist.

  She wondered what to do with herself. There had been not a sound since the rumble, which she felt sure had been either an explosion or an earthquake. There was only one way out of the ward, and that was through the locked and barred doors, and past the armed guards on the other side. It seemed delusory at best to start reading or attending to needlework while a battle perhaps raged above her head. A battle so close that she feared for John. And so she resumed her pacing, feeling that at least she would be prepared to answer the call to action should such a call come.

  She stopped at the sound of two muffled cracks, almost certainly gunshots. .38s, if she were any judge. They had come from beyond the main doors, though at what distance she could not tell, for the doors were reinforced and sounds from without were always indistinct.

  Lillian spun on her heel and moved swiftly and silently towards the door. She had long ago learned to move with great stealth even in boots, though now she surprised herself with her almost feline grace.

  As she pressed her back against the wall next to the door, hiding in the deepest shadows, there came a soft click, and the door swung inwards. No light flooded into the ward; there was but pitch darkness in the corridor beyond, and utter silence. Some sixth sense took hold of Lillian, warning her not to call out. She felt sure that it was not the guards come to check on her. The prickling at the back of her neck told her that the armoury was indeed compromised, despite Cherleten’s assertions.

  A thin man entered, clad in black much like the agents of Apollo Lycea. The gleam of his bald, white head, however, with its map of blue tributary veins, betrayed his nature. The hunter sniffed the air, and stepped fully into the ward, noiselessly, its motions fluid. Lillian did not hesitate.

  She flew from her hiding place, right hand outstretched like a talon, aiming for the creature’s throat. It was instinctive, and she yielded to that instinct. The creature was quick, and flinched away at the last moment, so that Lillian’s fingernails rent only shallow trails in its neck.

  An arm, hard as iron, folded around Lillian’s neck, and wrenched her with great force towards the door. She jolted her head back into the creature’s face, and as its grip slackened she drove her left elbow after it, smashing into its nose. The creature released her, but did not so much as make a sound to show its discomfort, which enraged Lillian still further. She spun and grabbed its arm, avoiding a clumsy strike as she twisted and wrenched it around, controlling her opponent’s momentum as she had learned in the dojo. She heard a satisfying crack as its shoulder dislocated, and she slammed it head-first into the wall. She had been utterly focused on her enemy, but now her ears pricked as a low, avian trill echoed through the otherwise silent facility. Only then did she look into the dark corridor.

  At least six pairs of violet eyes gleamed in the darkness, moving closer.

  Lillian threw the slumped form of the hunter down and slammed the doors shut, throwing herself against them. But they burst it open and Lillian was tossed bodily across the tiles, the skittering of claws behind her.

  She was carried away upon a tide of pallid flesh, bony fingers digging into her, claws scraping at her cold skin. She struggled, but there were too many, their hold upon her too strong. She was pulled upwards and spun around in the darkness, head wrenched back to look into the ward behind her. From the shadows at the door, the form of the hunter she had fought coalesced like an apparition stalking from fog, sliding from a black heap upon the floor until it assumed its full height, a wet popping sound accompanying the jerk of its arm as it clicked it back into position. Its eyes opened, and gleamed with malevolence.

  Six ghouls, half-naked, malformed things, now carried Lillian aloft like pallbearers. The hunter came forward until its ugly face was inches from her own. It could have been one of the very creatures she had encountered upon the moors, one of the creatures that supervised the slaying of Arthur. Even if she had not rearranged its features during the struggle it would have been impossible to tell.

  ‘You… come… with us,’ it whispered, the words coming laboriously, as a rasp deep within its throat, stilted and clicking.

  She tried once more to struggle, to free her arms and lash out, but the more she struggled the more the ghouls tightened their grip. In the end, she could only resort to spitting in the hunter’s face, and even then it did not so much as blink.

  At that moment Lillian became dimly aware of another presence in the corridor; she heard it—smelt it—before she saw it. The hunter felt it too, and began to turn even as Lillian heard the click of a trigger, the revolution of a pistol chamber. She flinched as the report of the gun echoed around the ward; then she was dropped unceremoniously into the tangled midst of the ghouls as the hunter’s skull opened up.

  Another shot winged one of the monsters, and the ghouls scurried for the shadows, their courage failing now that their overseer was no longer directing them.

  Lord Cherleten hoisted Lillian to her feet and pressed a gun into her hand.

  ‘More will come,’ he said, through r
agged breaths. ‘Clear this area first. Leave none alive.’

  Lillian needed no further invitation. Her keen eyes alerted her to every movement in the darkness, searching for the tell-tale signs of a dull amber glow around the heads of the ghouls as they scrabbled behind beds and clawed their way up onto the vaulted ceilings. The creatures could react faster than a human, Cherleten had said, but they were not dealing with humans here. The pistols compensated for the enemies’ numbers, and the ward quickly became a killing ground.

  Only when the last creature had fallen did Cherleten place a hand on Lillian’s shoulder.

  ‘Agent Hardwick,’ he wheezed, ‘we are undone.’

  She saw at once that he clutched his stomach, and a pinkish ooze seeped from a grievous wound. His wig had slipped, and his right trouser leg was ragged, as if it had been savaged by a pack of hounds.

  ‘You are hurt,’ Lillian said, as Cherleten leaned on her.

  ‘I will heal, which is more than I can say for this country. Or this world.’

  ‘What—’

  ‘Help me to the examination room; over there, quickly.’

  Lillian did as she was bid, and only when Cherleten was finally heaved into a chair and began to rifle through boxes of medicines and chemicals did he explain itself.

  ‘They have killed the Queen,’ he said. His face was more ashen than usual, his expression one of utter defeat. ‘They have detonated an etheric bomb, Agent Hardwick. The destruction is… beyond reason. The Queen is dead: countless others with her.’

  ‘John?’

  ‘I do not know. There were two bombs, one near Whitehall, and one here. They know about this place. They know where you are.’

  ‘I have to get to the club,’ Lillian said.

  ‘You will not get near it. Did you hear me? It was an etheric bomb. The veil is thinned, the rifts are opening all over London. By God, I cannot describe what I have seen out there. It is the end.’