The Fallen (12 page)

He looked across at the Priest. “Sister Isabella. She will play her part yet, for ours, and his, gain. It is time now to complete the work and prepare the world to welcome their return. When the third and final act must be done, I will hunt Isabella down and ensure that Tacit does what has long been required of him.”

PART TWO

SEVENTEEN

T
HE
V
ATICAN
. V
ATICAN
C
ITY
.

Monsignor Benigni had never in his life expected to be involved in a murder case.

He knew he shouldn't be here. The usual business of the Sodalitium Pianum was to weed out attempts to modernise the timeless fundamental values of the Catholic faith, a far cry from dangerous inquisitional work. But no matter the task, Benigni knew that if the work brought him closer to God, then he would be happy. After all, he was a devoutly God-fearing man. Anything he could do to gain favour from his Lord would be comforting to him.

When he had established the Sodalitium Pianum in 1907, he had done so to help root out and censor the teaching and distribution of condemned doctrine within the faith, to stamp out the threat of modernist thinking within the sound traditional values of the Church.

However, he had accepted the request by the Holy See to investigate the murder without hesitation. The Inquisition, more adept and experienced at handling such a case, was stretched, its ranks overwhelmed and strained by recent events within the city and further afield. The Devil's grip upon the earth seemed to be tightening, and Monsignor Benigni knew that his work here might perhaps not only help in some small way to loosen his scaly-taloned hold, but would undoubtedly win him greater admiration and respect from many within the upper echelons of power. And, with this admiration, Benigni knew he would be enabled to further expand the remit of the Sodalitium Pianum's work.

Monsignor was a simple, earnest man, but he had big plans for his own secret organisation.

An overweight bear-like figure, dressed in stern starched black save for the square of white at his neck, he stood at the apex of the bridge and looked down into the Tiber. They'd found Inquisitor Cincenzo's body nearly a mile down river from here, snagged on rocks where the river bed rose and the waters ran quicker. He'd been shot, clean through the head. Death would have been instantaneous.

Benigni turned his notes in his short stumpy fingers and pushed his glasses back up his nose, absently humming a tune he had recently heard. It was a waltz by an American arranger called Frederic Knight Logan, a most offensive tune, and Benigni forcibly caught hold of himself and shook his head to remove the song, dragging a hand across his forehead to mop his sweating brow. Clearly he needed rest. He seemed overworked and weak, susceptible he supposed to the Devil's temptations.

Refocusing his mind on his case notes, he considered what he knew. The round which had been used was a .455 and had come from a Webley revolver, standard issue for Inquisitors. Inquisitor Cincenzo, the individual who had been killed, was young, eager, had achieved good grades during his acolyte years and showed a penchant for learning, perhaps too much. Perhaps it was that which got him into trouble eventually, speaking to the wrong people, asking too many of the wrong questions?

Benigni looked back across the bridge and the marks in the dirt where the pack had surrounded Cincenzo and hemmed him in. The grip marks proved they were regulation inquisitional boots. Everything pointed to an internal killing.

Everything except the sulphur.

There was a smell of sulphur which seemed to linger around the spot where Cincenzo had been shot. That was hard to explain.

“Monsignor Benigni!” called one his team of the Sodalitium Pianum, approaching with urgency.

“What is it?”

“Something we have found scrawled on Inquisitor Cincenzo's wall in his residence.”

“Oh? And what would that be?”

“Simply three words. Eyes. Flesh. Life.”

“Whatever does that mean?” Benigni mumbled, more to himself than his fellow Priest.

“I have no idea. He'd scrawled it on his wall beside his bed, along with a name. Tacit.”

“Poldek Tacit?” muttered Benigni, adding Tacit's name to the three words in his notes. “Why should Cincenzo ever name him?”

EIGHTEEN

R
OME
. I
TALY
.

“I'm surprised,” said Isabella, pulling her still damp clinging clothes away from her skin, “you dealing with Inquisitors? The soldiers of the Catholic Church? I thought the Church was your enemy?”

“Have you listened to nothing we've said?” Sandrine shouted, propelling herself forward to lean over Isabella. Her reaction was so extreme that Isabella, thinking the woman was about to lash out at her, cowered away in fear. “Everything has changed. Old feuds have ended, concessions have been made. They've had to be, especially now in these dark days. This Inquisitor? He was an ally.”

“And how many of you are there?”

“Not enough,” Sandrine sighed, turning away. “The Darkest Hand, they have corrupted too many minds, enslaved too many hearts. Where there is fear in a person, there is an open harbour within which to moor the seeds of hate and darkness. And we are even fewer now.” She looked across at Henry, who nodded.

“There were four other Inquisitors who had joined us but we lost contact with them three days ago,” he said.

“Where?”

“In the city. There were rumours of demons in south Rome. They went to investigate and sent a message, something about a seer.”

“A seer? Who's that?”

“We don't know. And they've not been heard from since.”

“But we are a start,” insisted Sandrine, her jaw squared by her gritted teeth. “A beginning. Soldiers, Priests, Inquisitors. We are all fighting for the same reasons against the same enemy.”

“For many months now we've infiltrated the Vatican,” said Henry. “Found allies.”

“We've had to,” said Sandrine, anticipating Isabella's next question. “For it is there that the Darkest Hand first took root, perhaps even before 1877. We have learnt that much. From that black seed it has spread far, throughout the faith, enslaving many within the Inquisition and the Priesthood, slithered into industry, politics, royalty, the military, wherever there is the opportunity to gain favour and an initiative against others presumed to be weaker. The lure of the Devil is strong. And we must work together to fight him.”

“And who exactly are you?” Isabella asked.

“We are what comes after the Mass for Peace,” said Sandrine.

“The Mass for Peace failed.”

“And that is why we exist today. This world war, we think it is part of their plan, the precursor to his returning, the preparing of a land fit for one of his wickedness and ruin, for when he returns.”

“And who is he?” asked Isabella, but she feared she already knew his name.

Sandrine's voice had fallen to a low murmur. “The Antichrist.”

Isabella hesitated, attempting to speak, but the words failed her. She shook her head, letting out her breath, looking between the pair of them disbelievingly, their hard glares burning into her.

“I … I don't believe you,” she said.

“Don't, or can't?” asked Henry.

“Both! The Antichrist? Just because events are mirroring what happened in 1877, that doesn't mean anything.” She could feel her face flush with shock. “It doesn't mean
he
is involved!”

“The famine? The possessions? The demonic births?” said Sandrine, raising an eyebrow.

“Do you think he has returned already?”

“No. He is biding his time, waiting for his moment to grasp power and drag the world into an apocalypse from which it might never recover. But he cannot do that yet. Not until all is ready for him.”

“But I still don't understand!” exclaimed Isabella. “How do you know it is him? I have seen the wickedness of man with my own eyes, what he is capable of. It does not mean that the Devil guides his hands or his actions.”

“You talk of evil,” replied Sandrine. “You cannot begin to imagine the depths of its corruption.”

“I don't know what you mean.”

“I wouldn't expect you to, not unless you had witnessed it first hand, and even then you would doubt what you had witnessed. This evil is hidden deep, buried within the very roots of the Vatican, and now commands the highest echelons of power through persuasion, fear and black magicks. This is why we cannot trust anyone else to fight it. The Holy See, the Inquisition, the governments of the world, they are all polluted by the Darkest Hand's influence.”

Isabella held up her hands. “Stop!” she said. “Stop! Look, I am sorry. I am tired and I am cold and this brandy is too strong. You're telling that great swathes of people have sided with the Devil? That it originates from
within the Vatican? That they are attempting to see his return to the world?” She looked across to Henry, hoping to see some sense from him, but the young officer showed no emotion. Isabella looked back at Sandrine. “I will not believe it, not for a moment!”

“And that is why they are allowed to grow, fester like a disease in a wound. For long we have investigated. They are preparing his domain. But he will only return when the world is truly ready, and his lieutenants are in place, the seven princes of hell.”

Isabella shivered and drew the blanket tighter about her. It seemed as if the temperature within the room had dropped at the mention of such things.

“What plans they have, we do not know. But they must be stopped. You saw what they did to Inquisitor Cincenzo. What they tried to do to you. They'll stop at nothing, nothing to achieve their goals. They're wicked, black beyond words.”

“How? How did you come to be here, in Rome? To travel all this way?”

“Wolves talk,” replied Sandrine darkly, and Isabella looked at her confused. “After Fampoux, Henry and I went south, both to escape what was intended to happen at the Mass for Peace and to escape the madness of the war.” She looked across at Henry and for the first time Isabella saw her smile, a sad determined smile full of love and admiration for the man seated at the table.

“At Lyon we felt we'd gone far enough away,” continued Henry, picking up the story. “The house we found we rented from the farmer. It was decrepit and small, an old animal shelter, barely big enough for the pair of us, but the farmer seemed happy for us take it and turn it into a home before it fell to stones in the ground.”

Sandrine stepped back to the table, leaning over it, her knuckles white to the wood. “After we settled in the South of France, it was not long until I caught the rumour of clans close to Lyon. I would visit them, cautiously at first, but I garnered their trust over long months and eventually they welcomed me into their burrows. They appreciated the company of others from outside their community who did not balk at the sight and smell of them. They learnt of my past, and I learnt of theirs, and of what they had heard from deep beneath the roots of the Vatican.”

“What had they heard?”

“That the darkness was returning once again. Wolves talk long in their lairs. It is all they have during the hours of sunlight, they talk, and they tunnel and they dig deep and far. And during that time, they caught word
that there were dark forces at work within the fabric of Rome. Something rotten growing deep in the heart of the Vatican, something which had been on earth before, and was now returning again. This war all around you, this is a sign that the age of darkness is coming. Indeed, some say, the age has already arrived.”

“And how had they come to learn this? They cannot leave their lairs by daylight, and when they do at night, they are rent of all sanity.”