Immortal Sacrifice: #4 The Curse of the Templars (37 page)

The insignificant wound only served to encourage his attacker.
Redoubling his efforts, his arm came more swiftly. Steel sang against steel as Caradoc staved off the savage attack. Sheer aggression drove him backward, unspeakable rage that marked this knight as one of the first Azazel had claimed. Aonghus? Mayhap Rhodri?

Against his will, Caradoc glanced at the ghoulish face.
Nay. Cuthbert. One of the third band to swear their oaths, and one who had rushed headlong into every battle they had known. A good man. One too noble for this end.

Resolved to freeing the man he recognized, Caradoc put more effort into his counter attack.
’Twas time this man’s suffering came to an end.

He thrust hard, throwing his weight into a forceful uppercut that thrust his broadsword between the links of chain and into Cuthbert’s ribcage.
Bone ground against Caradoc’s blade, the grating yet another stark reminder this had once been an honorable man.

Caradoc did not give the knight time to recover.
As his fallen brother doubled over, one hand clutching at the gaping puncture, Caradoc jerked his sword free. With all the strength he could muster, he lifted it high over his head, then with the deadly force of a weighted guillotine, brought it down against Cuthbert’s exposed neck.

His head toppled from his shoulders.
Rolled to a stop at Caradoc’s feet. Fathomless black eyes faded to the mild color of rich soil and stared unseeing at the high ceiling. The body fell in the next heartbeat. A lifeless pile of tainted mail that could never wield a weapon against the Almighty again.

As Caradoc stepped back to regroup and assess Farran’s circumstances, a wispy sliver of white rose from the crumpled form and spiraled slowly toward the heavens.
With the next arc of Farran’s arm, Cuthbert’s companion joined him on the ground, leaving one dark knight still standing.

A mocking laugh rang out from the balcony, drawing Caradoc’s immediate attention.
There, leaning over the crumbling, gold-gilt balustrade, a man looked down on him and Farran with a sneer.

Paul Reid—there could be no other explanation.
Though he did not resemble the demonic representation of humans Azazel’s minions were capable of assuming, Caradoc held no doubt he looked on Isabelle’s tormenter. Anger slid into his veins, tightened his fingers around his pommel.

He glanced at Farran.

“Go.” Farran nodded toward the tilting stairs. “I shall dispose of this one.”

Needing no further encouragement, Caradoc bounded for the stairs.
He took them two at a time, quickly arriving on the balcony. Spying Paul in the lighted alcove, he strode forward, intent on ripping the demon in two.

Paul’s smile broadened as he stepped into the wide room.
He opened his mouth to speak, but before he could spew foul words, September’s frightened scream drifted through a broken window.

Caradoc looked to the shattered glass, the sound turning his innards inside out.
’Twas not just fear that produced the gut-wrenching sound. He had heard the same sort of anguish more than he cared to count on long ago battlefields. Women who had been run through. Children who stood by as their parents were cut down.

On the wafting sound of sobbing, Paul’s laughter came again.
“She has such a sweet voice. I’ve enjoyed her tears so much.”

Rage, more pure than any divine light, coursed through Caradoc.
Blinded by the emotion, he put his head down and barreled forward. He would stop this now. Cease September’s suffering and carve that wicked smirk off the man’s mouth. Forever still that vile laughter.

Yet when his sword punctured Paul’s shirt and should have sunk deep into flesh, a vise-like hand clamped around Caradoc’s wrist.
He stopped as if he had hit the stone behind the man. Shock coursed up his arm, settled into his shoulder, and burned all the way down his side.

He shook his head to shake off the stun.

“I cannot kill you…but neither shall you kill me.”

Before Caradoc’s eyes, Paul’s clothes fell away.
His body lengthened, released the human shape it had claimed. The hand around Caradoc’s wrist assumed claws that dug into his flesh and pierced bone.

He sucked in a sharp breath as two ebony wings unfolded from Azazel’s back, the very tips extending from floor to ceiling.

Jesu.

Chapter
36

M
oonlight filtered through thick overgrown trees, casting eerie shadows throughout the decaying garden. Beneath Isabelle’s feet, clumps of grass rose between the pavestones, threatening to trip her. She stumbled around a cracked marble bench and caught herself on a rough tree trunk. From the corner of her eye, a whitened face broke through the darkness.

She knew what it was before she looked, and the scream that threatened in her nightmare didn’t rise.
She’d seen the weathered angel with the broken wing enough times she could count the lines on the jagged feathers.

Behind her, decaying leaves crunched beneath hurrying feet.
They’d catch up to her soon. Caradoc, Noelle, whoever had followed her out the open garden gate. She hadn’t looked back or waited to find out who pursued. September waited ahead. Beyond the eerie mausoleum. At the feet of that faceless angel.

A shudder rolled through her, and she expelled the breath she’d been holding.
She had to hurry. God only knew how much time September might have. If Isabelle could get to that creature before it harmed her daughter, she could make the offering. Exchange herself for September.

And the people behind her would never allow that to happen.
Particularly if Caradoc was with them.

Damn him.
She deserved to hear what had happened to Chloe. But he’d known all along that if he confessed a similar plan had failed, she’d have never agreed to this crazy idea. She should have left him at the
Villa Igiea
and come here alone, as she’d intended to do hours ago.

“Help…
me
…” Strangled by tears, September’s voice drifted from within the shadows around the bend.

Isabelle’s pulse skyrocketed.
She pushed off the tree trunk, scraping her hands on the scraggy bark. “I’m coming,” she murmured beneath her breath. “Mommy’s coming.” Plunging headlong down the uneven path, she ignored the eerie way the shadows thickened. Like someone had sucked the light from the heavens out of the darkness. Not even the moonlight touched the leaves. No stars permeated the dense canopy of branches.

Around her everything was still.

Too still.

At her back, muffled voices grew closer.
Whispers drifted through the uneasy quiet, then blended with a sound more terrifying than all the screams—the sound of a child’s despondent crying. Soft and pitiful, September’s choked on her tears. Ever so faintly, a new plea, one that hadn’t been present in Isabelle’s nightmare, reached her ears. “Daddy.”

The solitary word twisted Isabelle’s heart.
September had expected her father here. A father who was willing to sacrifice her for a relic. True, he’d come with the intention of saving September, but when it all boiled down to what mattered, Caradoc valued that fucking necklace more.

If she got out of here alive, she’d take her daughter far away, regardless of oaths and bonds and obligations.
Isabelle refused to spend a life with someone who could cast a child aside.

But that wouldn’t happen.
Not if things went her way when she stepped beyond the mausoleum ahead. September would live, likely with her father, while Isabelle, herself, descended into the pits of hell.

“Mom-
my!”

Shrill enough to shatter glass, September’s scream splintered the stillness.
Isabelle raced forward. Her toe caught on a protruding tree root, and she stumbled, nearly smacking her nose on the broad side of the mausoleum wall. She caught herself on her hands, stopping herself millimeters away from the cold, grey stone.

Don’t look.
Not at the name. If she didn’t witness that damning surname, she could still pretend this was different from the nightmare, that she might somehow affect the outcome. But against her brain’s sharp order, her gaze pulled to the scalloped roofline. There, etched into the limestone, darkened with the stains of time, the block lettering spelled
Valguarnera.

Another ear-piercing scream permeated the night.
Tears pooled in Isabelle’s eyes. Her daughter was suffering and she couldn’t do a damn thing to stop it. Couldn’t move fast enough.

“September?” she yelled.
“Mommy’s here! I’m coming.”

A ferocious snarl answered.

Willing her legs to stop their trembling, Isabelle carefully picked her way over the fallen tree limb. Not much farther now. A few steps more. Another patch of thick shadows, and that ghastly angel would rise out of the darkness.

“Daddy!
Daddy! Help!”

At her daughter’s frantic pleas, Isabelle squared her shoulders and bellowed, “Take me, you fucking bastard.
Get the hell away from my daughter, and
take
me
!”

* * *

With calculated calmness, Azazel bent Caradoc’s arm toward his body. Slowly, he pushed the limb back, his gaze never wavering, until an unmistakable
crack
knifed Caradoc’s bones in two. Fire seared through him, rendering him speechless. But ’twould not have mattered. His protests would not have stopped Azazel, no more than they had stopped the Inquisition long ago.

In the next instant, Azazel flung him aside, sending him careening into the far wall.
Air shot from his lungs, and Caradoc crumpled to the floor. He could not move. Could not clutch his useless arm to his body to temper the overwhelming pain. Could not expel the curses that lodged in the back of his throat.

Azazel’s hollow laughter engulfed him.
“Listen how she cries for you. The faith she has in her noble father. Her angelic mother. Her pitiful God who has left her fate to the weakness of humans, she who carries the blood of noble Templar and divine seraph.”

Dimly the words registered.
But the understanding that filtered into him did naught to ease the tightness in his chest no matter that his lungs had once again expanded. September…his.

Nay.
Azazel spoke lies. Trickery was his greatest power. Caradoc ground his teeth together and struggled to stand. He dared not believe the elaborate fiction.

But Farran’s too-willing acceptance of the impossible plagued the recesses of his mind.
Isabelle swore she had lain with no other. Farran insinuated such could be possible. Now Azazel…

Azazel did not look surprised at all.
Indeed, his smug expression bore satisfaction.

“The love of a father is a precious thing.”
He snorted as he gestured toward the heavens. “I was his beloved once. I wept as he desired. And yet my father turned away.”

Chills coursed through Caradoc, though he could not say whether they stemmed from the blood that seeped through his ripped flesh or from the foreboding that descended on his shoulders.
He grimaced against another white-flash of agony and cradled his shattered sword arm in his good hand. “You asked for your punishment,” he gritted out through clenched teeth.

“Does she ask for hers?
Or is she innocent, this daughter of yours, this product of sin and evidence of your mortal weakness?”

Folding thick arms over an even thicker chest, Azazel undulated his wings.
The stirring breeze carried the curdled stench of blood and decay. A low chuckle reverberated through the room like the slow roll of thunder across an empty harbor. “She offers herself to me now, this seraph who possesses you. Tell me—are the tears worth both their lives?”

Only the sheer will to remain on his feet allowed Caradoc to fight off the blackness that infringed upon his senses.
He leaned against the wall, the pain in his arm intolerable. “You cannot kill her.”

“I know exactly what I can do to a seraph.”
His mouth curled at the corner, his wicked sneer appearing once more. “And what I can do to your daughter.”

His daughter.
God’s teeth. He had fought against the notion. Accused Isabelle of despicable things in attempts to deny the possibility. Yet now, as he stood before the master of all darkness, the truth began to invade Caradoc’s understanding of the world he had sworn himself unto. He could not begin to explain, nor could he deny the prickling at the back of his neck that screamed he had erred…and greatly.

In all the time he had known Isabelle, she had never lied to him.
Whatever miracle she had stumbled into, she had given him a child. And though he had never given consideration to the possibility of fatherhood, as he stood beneath the unholy shadow of the vilest evil, his heart swelled. With that growing feeling, however, came something deeper. Regret. Sorrow.

Failure.

He had foolishly ignored what lay before his very eyes. The resemblances of himself evident in September’s photograph. And now, he had subjected his child, the daughter he had not realized he could create, to death. He had led armies to victory against formidable foes, slaughtered in the name of the Almighty. Yet he could not save one innocent, helpless child from the very darkness he had sworn to keep from mankind.

“Such a predicament.”
Azazel shook his head. “Does a father’s love outweigh loyalty to the Almighty? Or will he sacrifice for righteousness?”

Caradoc met Azazel’s nefarious stare, the tears in his pants pocket a heavy weight to his heart.
He could order men to arms and send them into battle knowing they would not return, and yet he could not find it within himself to speak the words he knew he must. Tears welled in the corners of his eyes. How could he choose? To uphold the Order’s purpose, he doomed the innocent. If he chose Isabelle and September, he would betray the Templar, the knights who had given their souls to uphold the vows they swore.

“You try my patience, knight.”
Azazel propelled himself forward, bringing his angelic form inches from Caradoc’s. Odd beauty lay in his masterfully crafted features, a chilling contrast to the soul that had fallen so far from grace. “Tell me where the tears are, or those you love will pay the price.”

A long shadow fell across the floor behind Azazel.
Caradoc looked to the doorway, finding Farran, his back to the wall. Their gazes locked, and in that brief passing of seconds, Caradoc was transported back in time, to the day they had traveled to Clare and Farran had lost his son. When they had left that despicable place, Farran had grieved. For centuries, he knew no peace. He chased after death, willing to give himself unto it, to escape the guilt, the heartache, the torturous memories.

With the subtle inclination of Farran’s head came permission to do the unthinkable.
A silent token of understanding that spoke not merely encouragement but the promise to stand at Caradoc’s side no matter the punishment.

Surrender the tears.
Turn his back on all he believed in. For Isabelle. For September.

Caradoc swallowed as he blinked back the wetness in his eyes.
Releasing his broken arm, he let out a hiss, and dizziness once again threatened to consume him. He sank to the floor, and with some difficulty lifted the hem of his hauberk and reached inside his pocket with his.