Devil’s Kiss

by Sarwat Chadda

  Billi ran across the flagstone courtyard, sprinkled with pre-dawn frost. The two ghuls screamed, and she saw a blur of movement ahead.

  Billi fell down the steps to the entrance. Iron-stiff fingers dug into her shoulders, but somehow she wrenched free.

  Sanctuary! She stretched out to touch the broad, arched west door, her only hope. Suddenly she was jerked backwards. One of the sisters locked her fingers round Billi’s throat, hoisted her off the ground and her head pounded with trapped blood.

  ‘Sanctuary,’ Billi whispered, hands straining out, fingers fully stretched, their tips so tantalizingly close.

  The church doors exploded outwards, hurled apart by a hurricane. Devastating white light consumed them and the sisters let out a hellish, banshee-high scream before being swept away by the brilliant roaring wave.

  Billi crashed to the ground, paralysed by the brightness. The light wiped out everything around her and it carried thousands of voices, a deafening cry of rage. She curled into a ball, eyelids squeezed tight, fists covering her face, but she could not escape the light. It burned through her eyelids, searing her retinas.

  And then it was gone.

  She lay there, too terrified to move. Her head echoed with the sudden absence of noise, and it was a minute or two before she dared lower her hands and, slowly, open her tear-swollen eyes.

  A door creaked on one hinge. The wood was warped and its surface coated with ash. Behind her jagged splinters had embedded themselves in the wall. Of the ghuls, nothing remained except dirty black smears where they had last stood. Inside, the church walls were streaked with soot, and the flagstones cracked and polished black, as though exposed to immense heat. Thousands of tiny pieces of burning paper, torn from the hymn books, floated in the air like sprites at a ball. Glass tinkled like a shower on to the stone. Every single window had been shattered, leaving jagged glass teeth sticking out of the stone. Thin columns of smoke spiralled off the smouldering remains of the pews, each now a deformed, ash skeleton.

  But within this devastated, burnt-out shell, Billi saw someone.

  Standing in the centre of the choir, alone and bright in the darkness, as though glowing from within, was a man. Billi squinted, narrowing her eyes because he shone so brightly, as though a star made human. But slowly he dimmed, his energy spent, and she gasped.

  He could have been Michael’s twin. The same flawless, marble-chiselled features, the same thick, sensual lips. The only difference was the eyes: they were hidden behind black glasses. The smoke coalesced around him into a suit of dull black. He walked towards her, the floor hissing as his bare feet trod the polished superheated stone.

  ‘Hello,’ he said.

  He had shone so bright, the brightest star.

  The Morning Star.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ said Billi.

  He smiled. ‘Exactly.’

  Then the Devil reached out his hand and helped Billi up.

  26

  Billi expected to feel pain or intense heat as he touched her. But, no, it was just a simple, lukewarm palm. Nothing special about it at all.

  ‘Well, SanGreal?’ He watched her. He stood in the centre of the molten holocaust and the vapours of steam and smoke ravelled around his limbs like serpents. His lips hinted at the merest smile, but the way he licked them was with an eager hunger.

  Billi stepped into the centre of the round. It was the oldest part of the church, and where she’d been initiated into the Poor Fellow Soldiers of Jesus Christ, the Knights Templar. She remembered the candles, the nine empty chairs and the others, standing among the stone effigies of former and ancient patrons of the Order.

  They were still there. On the floor around her were eight carved stone knights. William Marshall. Geoffrey de Mandeville. Gilbert Marshall, among others. But now their features had buckled and melted into grotesque, worm-like shapes, all nobility deformed and destroyed.

  Satan drummed his long nails against a smouldering marble column.

  ‘You tried to come through, during the ritual. But we closed it down. How?’

  He drew a circle in the air. ‘I need no trinkets to come to Earth.’ He pressed his foot on one of the effigies. The face melted like wax. ‘I am not bound to the Mirror. My kind can come and go as we please.’

  ‘Aren’t you trapped in Hell?’

  ‘What is Hell, SanGreal?’ He spread out his arms. ‘Hell is the cry of a starving infant. Hell is the begging for mercy then denied. Hell is the betrayals between man and wife.’ He pressed his hands together and the smile stretched. ‘The lies between father and child.’ He tapped his chest. ‘Hell is where the heart is.’ The Devil looked around the ruined church. ‘If God hears every prayer who hears the curses? The cries of pain? The bitter lies? We do. Eventually the torment is so great the Ether tears open and a devil enters the material world.’

  ‘You’re lying. If that was true the streets would be full of devils.’

  ‘And how do you know they are not?’

  Billi backed away, but she had nowhere to run. As she retreated into the church, into the chancel, Satan stepped closer. Suddenly Billi felt her back against the altar. He stopped.

  ‘I am here to help you,’ he said.

  ‘How?’

  He pointed at the altar behind her.

  A sword had been driven into the large marble block. It stood proud, bright and high. Two metres long, the blade was only a thumb wide. It seemed more a rapier and likely to snap with the slightest impact. The hilt was neatly wrapped in silver wire and long enough for two hands, the pommel a plain walnut shape. Light slipped over its cutting edge like quicksilver.

  ‘What is it?’ she said, unable to take her eyes off it.

  ‘A Silver Sword.’

  ‘Who made it?’

  ‘I did. During the Rebellion.’

  The Rebellion.

  The War in Heaven.

  ‘That sword will kill Ethereals. I guarantee it,’ said Satan.

  Billi climbed on to the altar. The sword was plain, elegant and without adornment. No jewels, engravings or runes of power. But it radiated a purity of purpose that all other swords merely hinted at. The first and most perfect weapon.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ she said.

  ‘Him too.’

  She touched the hilt and a wave of energy ran up her arm, electrifying her body. She shook once as the fire burst through her heart and then the pain evaporated and she felt swollen with power. Her fingers wrapped themselves round it and she gently pulled. The blade drew out of the stone with no effort. She’d expected it to be unwieldy given its odd proportions; instead it sat in her palm with the lightness of a paintbrush. She carved her name in the air and it responded to the merest suggestion of wrist movement.

  ‘That sword will make you invulnerable to Michael’s powers.’

  ‘You’re giving me this?’

  ‘No, exchanging it. A deal.’

  ‘For my soul?’

  The Devil grinned. He was close and the faint odour of old, putrid meat trickled from his mouth. He walked out of the ruined west door. ‘Come with me.’

  Out of the fog crept a rusty old car. It could have been black, but was so covered in grime it was impossible to tell. The paint was peeling off the body like crusty old skin and the engine rumbled deeply like a snoring giant. Billi felt the vibrations travel through the ground and into her bones. The driver wore rags and was little more than a skin-covered skeleton. His eyes, mouth and even his ears had been stitched shut. Old brown blood encrusted the torn skin.

  Billi’s hand tightened round the Silver Sword.

  The Devil stepped in and settled himself in the patched-up leather seat.

  ‘I won’t hurt you, SanGreal.’

  That’s what Elaine had said. Devils couldn’t directly hurt humanity. But Billi knew she was entering terrible danger. The low lamps of the car’s interior shone warm gold, the engine rumbled softly and the cold outside prickled her.

  She stepped in. The Devil sighed as she shut the
door.

  She watched the city glide by, lit by the orange sodium glare of the street lights, lost and diffused in the fog. The darkness surrounded these hazy spots, deepening in the crevasses of the architecture. Blackness gathered under the bridges, in the empty doorways and many side streets that ran through the city. Billi saw a young girl, not much older than she was, curl up with a patchy sleeping bag in the dark open mouth of an alleyway. Billi wondered if she would still be there in the morning or would the shadows have claimed her? Maybe the Devil was right and Hell was here, just the other side of the windowpane.

  The car drove the empty streets and it seemed as though light shrank from it. The darkness crept alongside the wheels, and just out of sight Billi sensed the chill of other things, perhaps the devils that did prowl the dark, answering cursed prayers and promising damnation. They lurked invisible beside her and in the presence of their master. The city beyond the window seemed to fade until all was mist.

  Then the car stopped and the door opened. The driver bent low as the Devil stepped out. Billi went next and looked around.

  They were outside Elaine’s.

  ‘Why are we here?’ The upstairs windows were dark. Everyone must be asleep.

  ‘So you can fulfil your part of the bargain.’

  ‘You want my soul?’

  The Devil laughed, but shook his head. He touched the lock and the apartment door swung open. He pointed up the stairs.

  ‘I want you to kill your father,’ he said.

  27

  ‘No!’ What else could she say?

  ‘Are you sure? Don’t you want to save the firstborn?’ The Devil raised an eyebrow. ‘Or Kay? Doesn’t he deserve to be saved?’ He wrapped his hand round hers and tightened his grip, squeezing her fingers against the sword hilt. ‘If positions were reversed do you think Arthur would hesitate?’

  She wanted to say yes, her dad wouldn’t choose duty over his daughter, but the words refused to come out. She remembered Michael’s words – and how he’d brought the Templar Sword down on her arm. Arthur had done nothing.

  Her life, or the life of every firstborn.

  That would be no choice at all, for him.

  ‘That’s right.’ The Devil lifted her hand, raising the blade. Billi pushed with all her strength, but she couldn’t fight him. The weapon’s edge brushed her neck. The slightest pressure and it would open her throat wide. ‘He wouldn’t pause for a moment, would he?’ He released her.

  Billi stood at the doorway, looking up at the bare bulb at the top of the narrow flight of steps. The fog around her rolled into the doorway, eddies of mist turning slowly in the entrance.

  ‘No.’ She couldn’t. Maybe her dad would choose duty over her. But she wasn’t like him. She may hate him, but if she wasn’t a Templar she certainly wasn’t an assassin. ‘Why d’you want him dead?’

  ‘They say that I am afraid of Arthur SanGreal. They are right.’ The Devil took off his glasses. His eyes…

  He had none. Blood encrusted the edge of his sockets; the lids were wrinkled and curled back, revealing two empty dark holes. He gripped her cheeks and pulled her so their faces were a few centimetres apart. ‘That’s because I’ve finally met a mortal more ruthless than I. ’ He gestured to the empty sockets. ‘Your father’s work.’

  She wanted to look away, but she couldn’t help herself. Staring into them she saw endless darkness, an abyss. The more Billi gazed into them the more she felt she’d fall, fall forever.

  ‘I was summoned, years ago, by a bishop, who thought he could command me. But as I appeared the Templars intervened.’ He put his fingers in the two holes. ‘Coming out of the Ethereal Realm into this world of clay isn’t easy, and isn’t gentle. Tearing through the caul of reality takes immense effort and we arrive weak, disorientated. Otherwise your father could not have done what he did.’

  That was how the Templars had got the copy of the Goetia. From this bishop. ‘So you killed the priest?’

  ‘I? Not I, SanGreal.’ He pushed the glasses back. ‘It was Arthur that punished the poor man.’ Billi’s reflection shone in the dark lens. ‘And his passing was not gentle.’

  Billi dropped the Silver Sword and it clattered on the cold stone. ‘Kill him yourself,’ she said.

  The two of them held fast, Billi pressed against the wall and the Devil hard against her. He slowly released her, leaving a row of bloody nail marks along her cheeks. He dipped his finger into his mouth. ‘Do you know what went through your mother’s mind as she lay bleeding to death in the hallway? Alone and abandoned? She realized, sooner or later, that would be you.’ He smiled cruelly. ‘You shall keep the company of martyrs. Isn’t that the fate of all Templars?’

  ‘But I’m not a Templar.’

  The Devil laughed. ‘Do you really believe you have any choice?’

  Did she? She’d quit and yet here she was, doing her father’s will.

  He would never let her be free. She had to free herself.

  Billi reached for the sword.

  ‘No, not with that. You must find your own way to do this. Leave it here until it’s done.’

  Billi went up the stairs.

  She unlocked the door and entered the lounge. She’d thought they’d stay up, but Elaine was slouched on the sofa, snoring. The table lamp was on and a copy of a book, The Talisman, lay open on her lap. Billi crept past her and took a knife from the kitchen drawer. It was a narrow-bladed skinning knife, stiff and softly curved. It would slip between ribs easily.

  An assassin’s weapon, that’s what Percy would have called it. He’d hated knives because they could be hidden in a smile. He’d said the assassins killed as they embraced their victims.

  Billi entered the bedroom.

  The curtains fluttered in the breeze; her dad never completely closed his window, not even when it was snowing outside. Just enough light slipped through the gap to see he was asleep. Lying on his back, the blankets lay half hanging off the bed, his upper torso covered in fresh white bandages. Old thin scars decorated his chest. He’d been fighting his entire life, first in the Royal Marines, and then as a Templar. He’d survived all those battles, all those midnight Ordeals with ghuls, werewolves, ghosts, demons.

  The Unholy rightly feared him.

  Moonlight caught the long sharp edge of her knife. Any chest wound deeper than seven centimetres was fatal; Billi had ten.

  ‘Jamila?’

  She froze as he whispered her mum’s name. Did he miss her so much that even now, instead of seeing her, he saw first his dead wife? Was Billi always going to come a poor second to a ghost? He loved death, not her. Arthur’s head shifted as he rose and leaned against the wooden headboard and his face fell into a shaft of moonlight. His eyes were red-rimmed, still dilated from the morphine, but they came into focus. ‘Billi,’ he grunted. ‘I thought it was… never mind.’

  Then he saw the knife.

  His gaze stayed on the weapon, like he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Perhaps his brain just couldn’t register it.

  Assassin.

  The best assassins were loved by their victims, until it was too late. How else could you get close to your target unless they trusted you? Unless they loved you?

  How else could you kill Arthur SanGreal?

  One life against thousands. It was one life against hundreds of thousands. The Devil was right: if their positions were reversed Arthur wouldn’t hesitate.

  Slowly he raised his gaze until those blue eyes of his met her black orbs. His cheeks creased ever so slightly and the wrinkles around his eyes bunched up. He smiled at her. ‘I understand,’ he said. He looked down at his chest, then turned his face towards the light through the window. And waited.

  Billi stood beside the bed, her heart pounding so hard she could hear it. Sweat coated her back. She’d only walked a few steps, but her legs quivered with effort. Only her hand was steady. She closed her eyes. She thought about Rebecca Williamson, dying alone and afraid. Like her mother. Like he would, one day, let her
die.

  One life against all the firstborn.

  Her dad’s life.

  She slammed the knife forward.

  28

  The knife stood jammed in the headboard.

  Arthur looked up at her. Tears lined his weather-beaten cheeks.

  The door crashed open and the light came on. Billi blinked in the sudden brightness. Elaine stood bracing the doorframe. Her hair was as wild as a witch’s and she stared at them, then at the knife a few centimetres beside Arthur. Her mouth hung open, then clamped into a furious grimace. ‘Tell her, Arthur! Tell her!’ she hissed through her gritted yellow teeth. She then straightened her baggy pyjamas and slammed the door shut as she stormed off.

  ‘Oh God.’ Billi stepped away from the bed, her entire body trembling. She stared at the bright blade quivering in the wood. ‘What? What, Dad?’

  Arthur straightened up. ‘I’m sorry, Billi. I’m sorry about all of this. I just wish there’d been another way. But you couldn’t know. It was Kay.’

  Suddenly it seemed so hard to breathe. Arthur took a deep breath, then spoke. ‘Kay said this night would come.’ He took hold of her hand; it was the only way to stop it shaking. ‘He prophesised you would kill me.’

  Billi shook her head wildly. ‘No, Kay doesn’t have that power. He said so himself.’ Telekinesis, telepathy, aura-reading, all the extra-sensory perceptions, but not this; he couldn’t see into the future.

  ‘She will sacrifice the one she loves to save them. That was what Kay said, back when we first found him.’ His voice was just above a whisper. He’d kept the secret so long he could barely speak it. ‘Those fits he used to have, they were visions. We didn’t understand at first. But this one kept coming back.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘I couldn’t, sweetheart. I couldn’t.’

  Sweetheart? The word seemed so wrong coming from him. Arthur looked at her, imploring, his face pale and bloodless in the moon-glow. It looked like the face of a dead man. He continued.