The Grigori separated, advancing towards her, one on either side of the alley, coming at her from two directions at once. Instinctively, she retreated until her back was firmly against the gates at the end of the cul-de-sac, and then pressed herself as hard into a corner as possible. Positioned in this way, she restricted the options of her attackers, and limited the exposure of her flanks. She shuffled her feet on the cobbles, ensuring as firm a stance on the rain-slick stones as possible, then flexed her knees and the elbow of her sword arm, preparing herself for the onslaught.
From one of the windows above the alley there was a sudden shaft of light as a sleeper disturbed by the voices peeked out, then, seeing the swords brandished, just as quickly re-shuttered the window. But that instant of illumination allowed the Lady to see her adversaries. The Grigori were just as she remembered them: slim and sinewy with almost transparent skin possessing a blue tinge produced by the veins and arteries throbbing beneath it. But, as always with the Grigori, it was their eyes that singled them out as something different, something inhuman. Their eyes were coloured a feline yellow, like the eyes of a ravenous beast.
But if the light had illuminated the Grigori, it had also illuminated her and this prompted a comment from one of her adversaries.
‘Smotri, ona odieta kak Lilit. U neio znak zmei. Na nei simvol Lilit. Ty dumaesh …?’
Look, she is dressed as Lilith, the Lady translated in her head. She sports the sign of the snakes. She wears the symbol of Lilith. Do you think …?
‘Be quiet,’ the other Grigori snapped and immediately his partner was silent. ‘It would be better that you surrender to the inevitable, my Lady,’ he suggested in an ingratiating tone. ‘Your ruse to deceive us by the use of a decoy wearing your red cloak only delayed us, we saw through the deception quickly enough. And any attempt to resist us will be similarly futile: your abilities with that little pig-sticker are undoubtedly inferior to those of myself and my companion with our blades. Surrender or die.’
She said nothing. The die was cast, the time for discussion over, the time for blood was at hand.
The two men took her reticence as the throwing down of the gauntlet. They drew closer, brandishing their long swords more threateningly. ‘My Lady, I beg you, do not oppose us. You have no understanding who it is you face.’
And neither do you!
They struck simultaneously, and it was their overconfidence that undid them. As she had assumed they would, they had taken her for just a woman, a Fragile, who would, as a consequence, be incompetent in her defence and irresolute in attack. They found themselves disappointed in both respects.
The Grigori on the right made a feint, pretending to lunge, intent upon distracting her attention away from his colleague who made his own attack with astonishing speed. But whilst she was surprised by how quickly the Grigori lunged at her – time had dulled her memory of how fast these creatures of the night moved – it was nothing to the surprise appearing on his face when, in a twinkling, she flicked her blade and turned her defence into attack, flashing the tip of the sword towards the Grigori’s eyes, and forceing him into a cursing riposte.
The Grigori retreated a step but in that instant his partner darted towards her, moving so fast that he had grabbed her by the arm before she could pull away. Unfortunately for him, all he succeeded in doing was to wrench the hand holding the derringer hard against his stomach. As soon as she felt the muzzle dig into his guts, she pulled the trigger. There was a muffled bang, the Grigori buckled and then staggered back, holding his stomach, his coat scorched from the heat of the bullet.
‘U etoi suki pistolet!’ he gasped.
Yes, this bitch does have a gun.
Now the second Grigori attacked with even greater fury, and the speed with which he used his blade incredible. He was far, far faster and far, far stronger than any man had the right to be – but then he wasn’t a man.
As their blades clashed, a shudder of pain stabbed through her wrist, as she struggled to hold the Grigori’s sword away from her eyes. It took all of her strength and power to hold him and for a second their faces were just inches away from each other’s, so close that she could smell his foul breath and could see the fear in the creature’s eyes.
Yes, he was frightened of her, frightened of her ability with a blade.
With a surge of strength he pushed her back, then came at her again, his blade a blur of flickering steel, darting this way and that in a maniacal flurry of cuts and sweeps, the blade controlled with almost unimaginable speed, dexterity and power. She retreated, desperately parrying his sword strokes, her arm and wrist aching damnably from the effort needed to withstand the attack and to match the fury of his assault.
But she was matching it!
Suddenly she realised that, superhumanly fast though the Grigori was, she was his equal. And as this realisation dawned, a clarity descended upon her. Her sight was suddenly sharper and her speed of thought faster. Now, when the man’s blade lunged at her out of the darkness, she saw it clearly and knew instantaneously how to make her riposte. Her movements were faster too, ensuring an effortless ease in the way in which she dealt with the attack, so effortless that, though she still recognised the danger she was in, she exalted in the fight. Now she began to take the fight to her adversary. Now it was her blade driving the Grigori back, forcing him to retreat from her sword point. She saw a look of bemused desperation appear on the creature’s thin, feral face: a disbelief that someone was matching him … and was bettering him.
He made a feint and reeled out of the reach of the Lady’s sword, and for a moment the two of them stood considering each other, their panted breath billowing like white steam in the cold night air.
‘What are you?’ snarled the man. ‘What manner of devil are you?’
She said nothing, waiting silently for the next attack, her sword held high, its point aimed directly at the Grigori’s face.
From far away, they heard the sound of a police whistle shrilling through the cold night air. The Grigori she had shot with the derringer staggered to his feet. ‘Semiazaz, suda idet policya i uzhe svetaet. Poshli!’ he yelled at his comrade.
Yes, Semiazaz, the police are coming and it is near dawn. You must go.
For a moment it seemed Semiazaz would fight on, but then, step by reluctant step, he edged back along the alley, though never for one moment did he allow his eyes to leave those of the Lady. ‘Know this, day-hag,’ he called out to her, ‘one day we will meet again and then I will know you for what you are. And on that day I will kill you. On this you have the word of Semiazaz of the Moon.’
With that he turned and, dragging his wounded companion along behind him, hurried out of the alley.
Exhausted by the fight, the Lady slumped back against the wall of the alleyway. She was astonished by her ability with a sword, by the way she had tapped into long-forgotten memories, memories of a time when she had been the finest of all the Lilithi in the use of a blade.
She trembled in the cold night air, which prompted her to pick up her cloak and draw it tightly around her. There was much to think about, but now there were more prosaic problems to solve. She had to get to Venice and, with both Zolotov and the Grigori trying to kill her, the sooner she vacated Paris the better. To survive, she had to find a safe haven, but how to get there? It was very late and the streets were empty of cabs and steamers, and for all she knew there were gangs of killers still on her heels.
‘You fought amazingly well.’ The cultured voice drifted towards her from the open end of the alleyway.
Automatically, if a little wearily, the Lady IMmanual brought her sword back to the en garde position, a move that was rewarded with a derisive laugh. ‘Somehow, my Lady, I don’t think you will find me as big a threat as your previous assailants,’ and out of the shadows sauntered the Marquis de Sade. ‘Yes, my Lady, I thought you dealt with those … things very ably.’
‘And you just stood by and watched?’
‘Of course! You could
n’t possibly expect me to risk life and limb for you twice in one evening, now could you? Anyway, I expended all my ammunition trying to blow your would-be assassin’s head off and, as I am no master with the sword, I decided that this was one tussle I should sit out.’
She almost laughed. The sheer impudence of the man! His bare-faced, unashamed hypocrisy was breath-taking … and potentially, very useful.
‘And what of Sister Florence?’
‘Wounded and in pain, but otherwise still in one piece.’
The Lady nodded and then smiled an off-kilter smile. This was the moment to entice de Sade into her web. ‘And now I suppose you want thanking for intervening on my behalf back in the Maison?’
‘Thanking?’
‘I have had my appetites piqued this evening, de Sade: piqued but unsatisfied.’ With that, the Lady drew back the folds of her skirt to reveal her nakedness. ‘I make it a point of rewarding all my disciples who serve me well.’
‘It would be an honour, my Lady,’ said de Sade, as he unclasped his codpiece.
Part Three
Venice
THE EDDIC OF LOCI 3: LILITH
PLATE 3
21
The White House: Washington DC
The Real World: 15 September 2018
By any measure the vaccine distribution network established by Frank Kenton to combat the Plague that swept across the US in the spring of 1947 was responsible for saving millions of American lives. Hailed as ‘America’s Saviour’ and with impeccable Evangelical credentials, it was a given that Kenton would be wooed by the Republican Party to stand as its Presidential candidate in the elections of 1949. Kenton accepted the nomination and in the campaign that followed, showed that he, more than anyone in the political establishment, had grasped that the mood and the make-up of America had fundamentally changed. Americans believed the Plague had been sent by God to punish them for their sinfulness and that was why only the faithful had been spared. Kenton’s policies reflected this: his election platform was that he would change the First Amendment to the effect that henceforward the US would be an exclusively Protestant country where religious freedom was robustly curtailed.
iSuccess in GCSE-Dip: A Revision Guide to Modern
History, ParaDigm Publications
There was a noticeable spring in Aaliz Heydrich’s step as she walked along the White House corridor to the room where she would be meeting with Jim Kenton and his wife. That she had just imbibed a full one hundred millilitres of prime-stock Italian blood had something to do with it – her spirits and her mental acuity always soared after partaking – but there was more to it than that.
That she’d managed to rid herself of most of the stupid affectations of her host body certainly helped. She’d had her hair cut to a more sensible length and dyed back to an approximation of her natural blonde colour. She’d completely overhauled her wardrobe, with all those rather infantile goth outfits consigned to one of Washington’s numerous charity shops. And she’d finally persuaded her ‘mother’ to stop trailing around after her, watching every move she made.
But the main reason for Aaliz Heydrich’s excellent mood was that today she would finally begin the journey that would see the fulfilment of her destiny, and would hasten the moment when she would be reunited with her father – her real father. Soon they would stand shoulder to shoulder as master and mistress of this, the Real World.
Waiting for her in the conference room were Jim Kenton and his wife Marsha – aka God’s Couple – the most famous and influential evangelists in America. But after having spent several hours studying Polly footage of the pair and watching edited highlights of their tele-missionary work, in the flesh Aaliz found them something of a disappointment. They were certainly older than Aaliz had expected. A Polly scan had told her that Jim Kenton was in his mid-fifties, the exact year of his birth somewhat mutable, and his wife a couple of years younger, but by the look of them Aaliz suspected they’d shaved a good ten years off their true ages. Oh, the lines and the wrinkles were skilfully concealed by tucks and Botox injections but all this did was give them that peculiarly doll-like appearance typical of those trying to conceal the ravages of time.
And then, of course, there was their use of the wonder of PollyMorphing; but nobody ever talked about that.
Kenton stepped forward as Aaliz entered the room. ‘Good morning, Miss Williams. I’m the Reverend Jim Kenton, and this here’s ma wife Marsha.’ His Southern drawl was so thick that Aaliz had trouble understanding him. ‘May I say what an honour it is to be invited to the White House.’
The codicil ‘at last’ was left unvoiced.
As Aaliz took the man’s soft, plump hand, she sensed from the look in his eyes how aggrieved he was that the President had never allowed him anywhere near this, the ultimate seat of power. Not that he should have been surprised: President Sam Williams hated Jim Kenton and all the religious nonsense spouted by Believers’ Broadcasting.
But Jim Kenton’s chagrin was understandable. Ever since the First Prophet, Frank Kenton, had been elected President in 1949, the Kenton clan had ruled America. Indeed it had only been the humiliation following the 12/12 Outrage that had given a platform for Sam Williams’s nuDemocrats to squeak – by the narrowest of electoral margins – into the White House. The defeat obviously still rankled: as far as Jim Kenton saw it, Samuel Williams had deprived him of his birthright. The two men loathed one another.
The hatred was so intense that it had taken Aaliz a great deal of effort – and crying – before her father had reluctantly given her permission to meet with Kenton. That Professor Bole had had a quiet word with him had helped: since Bole had so miraculously restored his daughter’s memory, the Professor, in the President’s eyes, could do no wrong.
Aaliz waved her guests into seats, and settled herself on the chair opposite. ‘May I thank you for taking the time to visit with me today,’ she began. ‘As you may have read, I have been ill recently but now I am quite recovered.’
A ‘God be praised’ from Jim Kenton, and an indulgent smile from his wife. ‘Perhaps we should pray?’ he suggested. ‘Remember what Jesus told us, my child: “Whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you will receive it, and it will be yours.”’
‘Amen,’ said Marsha Kenton.
‘Mark 11:22,’ observed Aaliz sweetly, after a prompt from PINC, though inwardly she did object to Kenton’s patronising tone. Child, indeed! ‘As I was saying, the illness I suffered was quite traumatic, leaving me helpless in a coma. But on waking from unconsciousness, it would seem that I have undergone a radical transformation of spirit. My illness, Mr and Mrs Kenton—’
‘Jim and Marsha, please.’
‘My illness, Jim and Marsha, provoked a revelation. Just as Paul experienced his epiphany on the road to Damascus, so I had mine in a hospital bed in the Walter Reed Hospital. In short, Jim and Marsha, I have found God.’
‘Hallelujah,’ the Kentons responded in unison.
‘I have been called by God to do a great work, and to lead the children of America back to His Grace.’
‘To lead?’ queried Marsha Kenton, who Aaliz suspected was uncomfortable with anyone other than her husband being called upon by God to lead.
‘Yes, God has told me how Satan has been undermining the spiritual and moral health of our beloved country by corrupting America’s youth. Young people today are addicted: they are addicted to drugs, they are addicted to the demon drink, and they are addicted to sex and other pleasures of the flesh. This is Satan’s handiwork, and God has set me the task of freeing young people from these addictions and guiding them back to the path of righteousness.’
Such was Aaliz’s blind certainty that Jim Kenton was stunned into silence. He simply sat on the couch with his mouth hanging open in a most unappealing manner. It was left to his wife to try to take control of the situation. ‘You’ve spoken to God?’
The look on the woman’s face was a picture of incredulity. It was one thing for the Kentons to
claim to be in regular and intimate communion with God, but it was quite another for them to meet with someone else who believed they were doing the same thing. It seemed, as far as Marsha Kenton was concerned, that when Jim spoke with God it demonstrated his divinity, but when someone like Norma Williams spoke to Him, it demonstrated that they were out to lunch.
‘Yes,’ confirmed Aaliz with a breezy smile, ‘I have spoken to God, and His message is very clear. I am to form a youth league to be called the Fun/Funs.’
‘The Fun/Funs?’ From the expression on Marsha Kenton’s face, this conversation was progressing rapidly from the rather odd to the downright lunatic.
‘It’s short for the Fun-Loving Fundamentalists. It’s God’s name for the movement that will put the joy and the certainty back into young people’s lives.’
‘But we’ve already got several youth groups,’ spluttered Marsha. ‘We’ve our own League of Young Believers.’
Aaliz paused to pour some coffee for her bemused guests. ‘The fact is, Marsha, God was quite disparaging to me about the existing Christian youth movements: He called them “Mickey Mouse”.’
‘God said that?’
‘His very words. He said that these youth movements would never be successful because they lack two important elements.’
‘And these are?’ asked Jim Kenton cautiously.
‘Well, the first is obvious. They lack a charismatic leader.’
The Kentons glanced at one another, presumably thinking they already had a charismatic leader in Jim Kenton. ‘And who would be the “charismatic leader” of these Fun/Funs of yours?’
‘Why, me, of course. God says I must dedicate my life to the saving of America’s youth. For many years we Americans have betrayed the sacred trust God placed in us. We allowed Satan to infiltrate our lives and to corrupt our great country. In the years since the Founding Fathers inaugurated the bastion of faith that is the USA, this blessed land has been diminished in stature: it has gone from being the most powerful country in the world to being one that is reviled and humiliated. We have been weakened and distracted by the specious, devilish, nuJu … Jew-inspired philosophy of humanism. We have been confused and rudderless. The First Punishment God imposed for this dereliction of our divine duty was, of course, the Great Plague of ’47, but even after such a profound cleansing of the ungodly the United States has never been able to fulfil its manifest destiny. God believes this is because American leadership has been weak and ineffective. He is very annoyed.’
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