Deliver us from Evil (33 page)

'So
I
must hope. For we both need each other. Our motives may be different - but our object is the same.'

Milady smiled, and shook her head in mocking disbelief.

'What else could
I
have done?' asked Robert in sudden anger. 'For
I
am mortal; whereas she is a creature of terrible powers.
I
need her help.
I
had no other choice.'

'No other choice?'

Robert met her stare; he did not reply.

Milady paused. 'And when you both reach your object,' she asked at length, 'what then?' She paused a second time; and the mocking smile began to fade from her lips. 'But
I
am feeble, of course,' she whispered with sudden bitterness, 'compared to the Marquise.'

Robert gazed at her for a moment, then sighed and turned away. As he did so, Milady reached out and laid her hands upon his cheeks again, so that he had no choice but to stare back into her eyes. They were glittering brightly - with anger, Robert thought, until she leaned across and spoke into his ear. 'Lovelace.' Her voice seemed not angry at all, but urgent, almost sad. 'Why do you fear me?' she whispered. 'Can you not understand?'

'Understand?'

'Why, yes.' She smiled. 'That it is as a mortal
I
shall ever love you best.' Milady continued to hold him for a moment; then kissed him suddenly on the brow and turned away. She gazed about her and shivered, as though only now made aware of the pounding of the rain, still beating upon the branches of the yew trees overhead. She raised her hood, and turned back to Robert, if you want my help, then you have only to ask. Otherwise
I
shall leave you at once. Decide, Lovelace. Decide it now.'

He stood frozen for a moment. Her stare was golden and very deep; he imagined he would sink into it, as he had done that first time, when he had lain upon her lap and felt her cool hand on his brow, that time in the carriage, leaving the stones. He stared into the darkness; then shook his head suddenly, and crossed to her. '
I
saw a corpse,' he said. He took her arm. 'A corpse, out there somewhere, risen from the dead.'

Milady nodded faintly. 'Then
I
should be able to discover it.' She stepped forward from the yews. She sniffed the wind; she frowned, and shook her head. Robert joined her and suddenly saw, ahead of him, a second empty grave. He pointed; then, as he walked forward to inspect it, discovered a third and began to run. There were emptied graves all around him, all about the church. He gazed with horror at the shattered coffins, at the shreds of winding cloth flapping in the gale.

Milady tensed suddenly.

'What is it?' Robert asked. 'Is something there?'

Milady angled her head. Still breathing in the gale, she crossed to the wall, and then walked along its side as far as the gate. She turned back to Robert. 'The Marquise,' she whispered, 'where did she go?'

'To seek out a restorative, after our long journey.'

'Then
I
dread to think . . .' She smelt the air again. 'Quick!'

Robert stared at her in surprise, but Milady did not pause to explain. Instead, she led the way beneath the church porch and then out towards the inn yard. There was a sudden sound of something splashing through mud. 'There!' cried Milady. She pointed, and Robert saw a dead thing, and then another, both slouching along the side of the churchyard wall. Their eyes were gleaming; and behind their blackened, shredded lips, broken teeth were bared in a snarl. Then one of them was suddenly upon him; and Robert thought, as the weight of the creature knocked him to the ground, how impossibly fast it had moved. But he had only a second to make such a reflection, for the creature's jaws were opened wide now and its yellow saliva was dripping on his face, blinding him for a moment so that he could only smell, not see, its hungry, searching mouth. Its breath was diseased, foul with rottonness and mud; and Robert put up a hand to ward it away. He touched the thing's face, gripping it tightly, until the flesh seemed to ooze beneath his fingers; but he could not halt its descent, and its weight pushed his arm ever back into the mud. He blinked desperately, and opened his eyes to find he was staring straight into the creature's own. The gleam of their hunger was terrible now; and yet, as Robert looked, so the fire seemed to fade, and then suddenly the eyes were stilled, frozen cold and dead. Robert felt the creature's grip slacken about his throat. He struggled free; and as he did so, he remembered how the other dead thing, in the graveyard, had also cowered before his gaze. Robert rose to his feet and, pulling out his sword, stabbed down hard into the creature's chest. It writhed and screamed, and tried to crawl away. He stabbed down again, and this time felt his sword puncture something soft and engorged. A black liquid bubbled up from the wound. It slipped thickly across the creature's chest, and ebbed into the mud.

'You have found its heart. It is over now.'

Robert turned. Milady was standing beside him. Her cloak was torn; her hair dishevelled and streaming in the wind. With one hand, she smoothed back her tresses; with the other, gestured at a second body lying in the mud. Robert crossed to it. He recognised the bejewelled hilt of Milady's dagger, protruding from the creature's chest. He bent down and drew it out, then cleaned it on his cloak and handed it back to her. As though distracted, she ran her thumb along the blade. 'At first,' she murmured distantly, 'he would not obey me.' She gathered her cloak about her, and stared down at the corpse, it was very' - she raised an eyebrow - 'very strange.'

it is unusual,' Robert asked, 'that these dead things do not obey your commands?'

Milady nodded, it is an unparalleled event. Why, Lovelace, do you remain such a leveller that you have not yet understood the nature of the world? Have you not witnessed for yourself how the greater rules the lesser, the master the slave, in a chain of being that extends without end?' Her eyes glittered, though whether with mockery or earnestness, Robert could not be sure. 'This creature' - she nudged the corpse with her toe - 'should have cowered before my merest glance.' She paused. 'Yet he did not.' She started suddenly, gazing towards the stables. 'And so it is,
I
am afraid for the Marquise.'

She delayed no further, but hurried at once across the yard. There was something lying by the stable door. Milady bent down beside it; Robert joined her where the Marquise was slumped, eyes closed, body twisted, on the straw. Milady pulled out her dagger from her cloak, then drew the blade across her wrist. A delicate line of blood welled up from the cut; she held the wound to the Marquise's lips. 'She is drinking,' she nodded to herself. The Marquise stirred, and moaned.

Suddenly she bent double; she clutched at the straw, then moaned again as she began to vomit. She muttered something unintelligible; then bent over again. Her vomit, as it dribbled across the straw, was viscous and black; like the blood, Robert thought, which had risen from the dead thing's punctured heart.

'What was it?' Milady whispered. 'What did you drink?'

'The blood,' gasped the Marquise. '
I
do not know how, but it is venomous.'

'What!' Milady exclaimed. 'You did not drink from those risen things?'

The Marquise retched again; then nodded faintly. '
I
would not have done,' she gasped, 'save that
I
was curious, for when
I
met with the creatures they would not at first obey my commands, and so
I
wished to taste them, to make certain what kind of thing they were. See!' She held up her hand. In the darkness, Robert could see faint pockmarks, disfiguring the marble whiteness of the skin. 'The blood sprayed me,' whispered the Marquise, 'when
I
cut through their throats, and its touch burned like quicksilver.'

Milady was gazing at her in astonishment. 'So you have never met with their breed before?' she asked. 'You do not know how it is that they are risen from their graves?'

The Marquise reached for Milady's wrist, and licked at it again. 'Tadeus spoke of such creatures,' she said at last, 'which he had seen infesting a village in Bohemia.'

'And where had they come from?' Robert asked.

'Tadeus claimed' - the Marquise pursed her thin lips - 'that they had been imbued with the breath of the Evil One.'

'And was he right?' Milady asked.

The Marquise waved with her hand. 'You have seen the creatures out there.'

'Then the man .
..'
- Robert swallowed - 'the man with the plague who came from my village . . .'

'Was no man,' answered the Marquise. 'Nor, though they may once have been, are the other creatures now risen from their graves.' She struggled to her feet. 'We must destroy them,' she whispered hoarsely. 'For they are dangerous and strange; and their numbers,
I
fear, are growing all the time.'

At that very moment there rose a noise like that of fists hammering on wood, and a distant shriek. The hammering came again and Robert, who had walked out from the stable, pointed to the inn. '
I
left a girl inside there,' he said. He narrowed his eyes. The storm was fading now, and dark forms could just be made out through the haze of the drizzle. Several were gathered around the inn door; others had climbed the roof, and could be seen crawling like slugs towards the shuttered windows. Robert began to run across the yard. There was a sudden splintering, and the door was left hanging from a single hinge. Robert heard a sobbing wail from inside; the creatures were starting to pass through the doorway. 'No!' he cried out. 'No!' The creatures turned at his scream, then they froze. Robert glanced back; the Marquise and Milady were both by his side, and for a moment he thought it was they, mistresses of the night, who must have petrified the dead things so; but then he took a step forward and, as he saw the creatures shrink and bow their heads, he realised with a shock that they were cowering before himself.

He glanced back again. The Marquise was frowning now; but her eyes, as she watched him, appeared eager and bright, as though with suspicions either roused or confirmed. Robert wondered what she might be thinking; but before he could ask, there came another scream, desperate now, from beyond the door, and he spun round and drew out his sword. He ran through the mud towards the crowd of the dead. They gibbered softly, and fell back before him, covering their eyes with their blackened, rotting hands.

Robert reached the shattered door, and ran inside; as he did so, he heard a cry from the far end of the room. The servant girl was crouching there, by the side of the fire, just as he had ordered her to do; and three of the dead things, in a ring, were watching her. One of them had been creeping forward; it tensed, then leapt. The girl stared at it dumbly, too terrified to shriek, even as it seized her by the throat and began to squeeze. 'No,' she choked suddenly, 'no, please, please - Father.' Then her eyes widened; she had seen Robert. 'Father!' she cried again, despairingly now, as the creature stiffened and then staggered, run through by Robert's sword. It turned and reached out, as though to throttle its attacker; but it met Robert's stare and staggered again, backwards, into the hearth. Immediately, it was enveloped by fire. The flames spread across the creature as though its skin had been coated in pitch; and within seconds its body was a twisting, writhing torch. The creature tried to scream; but its lips and mouth, and all its flesh were melting fast, and no sound came forth but a soft, hissing sigh. It stumbled forward; then began to collapse into a bubbling soup, so that soon its human form had been utterly lost, and there was nothing left but a sticky pool of guts, which hissed and turned to steam as it spread across the floor.

'Excellently done,' smiled the Marquise. She brushed Robert aside, and seized a burning log from the fireplace. She held it before her as though it were a poisonous snake; and as she advanced on them, the two remaining creatures began to whimper and grow maddened, for they were trapped against the wall. A single touch: the flames enclosed them both; the flesh, as before, began to melt across the flagstones. The Marquise smiled thinly. 'It has ever been the surest way,' she nodded, 'and the easiest, to dispose of such trash.' She glanced out of the window. A pale light was dawning, through the drizzle. 'Come,' she said. 'This is a business we must finish, before we continue on our way.'

She asked the servant girl for tapers and lamps, which she ordered to be lit. When they had been prepared, she led the way outside. The yard was empty. Robert stared about him in despair, but the Marquise smiled, and gestured towards the eastern sky, where streaks of orange and pink were breaking through the cloud. 'These creatures, it would seem, are not so deadly that they relish the day.' She narrowed her eyes as she stared at the graveyard, it would have made our task harder, had it not been so.'

The Marquise led the way across to the church, then paused as she stared about her at the graves. 'Here,' she said, pointing, and crossing to one where the coffin had been smashed. A creature lay curled up in the grave, half-covered by soil but still scrabbling at the trench's sides, so that more earth might fall and conceal him wholly from the light. The Marquise lit a taper; then bent down, and seized the creature's wrist. As though its fingers were trails of gunpowder, she touched each one; then rose to her feet to watch her handiwork. The melting flesh bubbled and oozed up through the soil. 'See how it is mingled with the mud,' the Marquise whispered, 'to form a single compound of liquid dust.' She gazed about her. 'Soon, all this place will be thick with such a slime.' She brought a scented cloth up to her nose; then crossed with her lantern to a second grave.

As she had promised, the business was soon finished. Within the hour, three cloaked and hooded horsemen were passing the barricades, taking the road which led towards Woodton and leaving behind them a village calm like death. A stench, greasy and charred, hung above the graveyard; but nothing moved there, nor disturbed the foggy air.