The Fallen (52 page)

The six-fingered blade slipped effortlessly between his ribs. The air gushed out from Cardinal Gílbert's choked lips, as if his spirit was trying to flee his dying mortal remains before it was trapped within.

Poré fell away, lying with his back to the cold wet stone, and closed his eyes, the last of the power crackling and dying around him before everything went dark.

ONE HUNDRED AND TWELVE

T
HE
I
TALIAN
F
RONT
. T
HE
S
OČA
R
IVER
. N
ORTHWEST
S
LOVENIA
.

In the moment the High Priest was slain, a noise and heat rose from the pentagram in the inner chamber below, a sound as if all the hordes in hell had been set free and a thousand thunderstorms were tearing open the heavens.

The broken vanquished powers came screaming from the claustrophobic chains of hell where they had been caged for so long, the cool air dissolving their ruptured, fractured shadows. Cursing and shrieking, the spectres of the princes of hell fought and clawed over each other to be the first to taste the air of earth, knowing that it would be for but a fleeting moment, a harrowing taunt of what they could have tasted, before their chains pulled them once more back into the fiery abyss. They took to the skies, spinning and evaporating in the moonlight like shadows before the sun, until only their frightful cries hung on the wind like a dark memory.

Sandrine sunk to her knees at the edge of the needle of stone, high above the pinnacle, the last of the rain washing the filth from her body. She lay there panting for breath, the low sun now breaking from between the clouds on the western horizon, capturing her in its final warming rays.

There was a noise from the steps behind her and, exhausted, she turned her head to look, as Henry and Isabella appeared. Henry set Isabella down and rushed forward, taking Sandrine into his arms, removing his coat and setting it about her, pressing the hair away from her face.

“Sandrine!” he cried. “Sandrine! My darling! Are you all right?”

She nodded, slumping in his arms. He looked around the empty circle of rock.

“Tacit!” cried Isabella, weeping and holding her hand to her mouth. “Where is he?”

“Gone,” replied Sandrine, tears of remorse and pain in her eyes. “He fell.” She looked over the edge of the cliff and cried long into Henry's chest as he pulled her close to him. “They came through,” she sobbed. “The demons. They came through. I heard them! I heard them come!”

But Henry shook his head. “No. They were only shadows of what might have been. The summoning was stopped. It is over.”

Isabella got to her feet and shakily staggered to the edge, peering over it. She screamed out to the valley far below, sinking to her knees, sobbing uncontrollably. She felt hands around her shoulders and let Sandrine embrace her.

Dusk fell. The three of them huddled close on the pinnacle of rock, chilled and sodden. The storm had stopped in an instant. They clutched onto each other, both weeping and cursing, sometimes animated and enraged, at other times quiet and withdrawn.

A gentle wind tugged at Isabella as she closed her wet eyes to the breeze and tried to make sense of everything. Tacit, the man they had followed, the man she had loved, was gone. Dead. He couldn't have survived such a
fall, a mile drop into a surging river far below. A noise drew them all to look towards the steps up to the stone circle. Pablo approached cautiously, hands gripped in front of him as if in prayer, his head bowed like a subservient slave to a master.

“He's gone!” he cried. “Poré, the one who came as a wolf. He killed the High Priest, the one he called Cardinal Gílbert. I saw it, with my own eyes. Stabbed him clean through the heart with one of the daggers.” The words came like a cascade, a rush of noise.

“Poré!” muttered Sandrine, shaking her head so her damp lank hair tickled the edge of her shoulders. There was the hint of a smile on her lips, amazement twinned with admiration. “So he followed us, all this way! I thought he'd died at the Mass for Peace.”

“How did he know?” asked Isabella. “How did he know to come here? Is he still on the summit?”

“He was,” replied Pablo. “But he left. He took the wolves with him.”

“Small mercies,” Isabella added, looking across at Henry and Sandrine.

“What do we do now?” asked Sandrine.

“We get off this mountain,” said Henry. “We get far away from here. The Austro-Hungarians,” he said, looking away to the east, “they're gathering for another assault.”

“Take me with you!” pleaded Pablo, his hands bound together in a white knot. “I have nothing left here.”

“How can you say that?” asked Sandrine. “What about your war?”

But he shook his head. “It is not my war. It never was. They groomed me for this moment, those Priests dressed in black. I cannot follow that same path, not now, not after all I have seen and heard and done.”

ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTEEN

T
WO
W
EEKS
L
ATER
.
T
HE
V
ATICAN
. V
ATICAN
C
ITY
.

The sun scorched the cobbled street, the flagstones so hot that to walk barefoot would burn one's feet within a few steps. Children squealed and
splashed in the pools and fountains, their shimmering skin roasting under the endless glare of the sun. Their shrieks of delight sounded like a festival after recent dismal days, everyone seemingly buoyed by the return of the warming sun which had lifted the gloom that had engulfed the city for so long.

Father Strettavario stood looking down into the clear waters.

“And the third angel poured out his vial upon the rivers and fountains of waters. And they became blood.”

Strettavario looked up at the figure who had stepped close to him unnoticed and quoted from the bible.

“Cardinal Bishop Adansoni,” said Strettavario, smiling weakly.

Adansoni smiled. “All along I suspected it was an algae infestation which turned the waters red. Not the Devil at all.” He looked long into the waters, his lips pursed in thought, before turning back at the old hunched Priest. “Why've you come here, Father Strettavario? Usually only tourists come here to the Trevi Fountain hoping for a miracle? Do you not have sermons to read, Priests to admonish, Inquisitors to scrutinise?”

Crowds of people drifted about them, chattering and gesticulating. Ladies dressed in pretty white dresses, cooling themselves with matching fans, threw coins into the waters. Men, moustached and elegant in their open-collared shirts and waistcoats, tutted and laughed, before guiding their wives away to the shade of Roman side-streets. Strettavario could hear that the main topic of the conversation was the war and Italy's checked expansions into the east.

“What is the point, Cardinal Bishop Adansoni, of anything?” shrugged Strettavario. “Tacit is dead. Perhaps it is a miracle I'm hoping for as well?” he said, before throwing three coins from his own pocket into the waters and walking away.

ONE HUNDRED AND FOURTEEN

S
ANTA
A
NA
. C
ALIFORNIA
. A
MERICA
.

A dust devil blew across Orange County, a spiralling column of stinging sand that made the two figures walking up South Raitt Street turn their faces away.

“Why ever did I agree to an afternoon walk?” asked the man in the light cotton plaid suit, knocking his hat against his hand once the whirlwind had passed. “A lie down after today's matinee would have suited me far better, Noah.”

“Nonsense, Ethan!” exclaimed the man next to him, smoothing down his hair and running his fingertips down the lengths of his moustache. “What better way is there to spend an hour than in the great outdoors?”

“There's dust in my eyes,” Ethan replied, looking down McFadden Avenue dismally. “We really shouldn't have ventured out. I have quite a headache.”

“And I must say, Ethan, that you have become quite a headache yourself. All day. Your performance this lunchtime at Clunes Theatre was barely passable. The critics will have a field day. If you're going to commune with the dead, or at least give the impression that you are, you really need to do so with a little more passion. As your agent it's my duty to speak truthfully and the truth is you sounded as morose on stage as those you were trying to raise.”

Noah searched in a pocket for his cigarette case and drew it out, offering one to the clairvoyant. Ethan shook his head and took a deep breath, letting it out in a long exhalation. “We have a reputation to uphold,” continued his agent, lighting a cigarette for himself. He picked a strand of tobacco from the tip of his tongue before blowing smoke out of his nose. “People come from all over to witness the miracle of you speaking with the dead. Don't let them down, dear fellow, and, more to the point, don't let us down.” He pressed a finger into Ethan's breast, before flattening his hair with a palm and taking another puff on his cigarette. He looked back and studied his colleague closely. “That said, you do look a bit peaky. Perhaps you're ailing with something after all?”

“I think I am.”

“I suggest a strong drink and a little sleep before this evening's performance.”

A black saloon car drove slowly past, the driver, a Priest, watching them intently.

“And the meek shall inherit the earth,” Noah muttered under his breath, watching the expensive car vanish down another avenue. “More like the bloody wealthy shall inherit it.” He turned his attention back to his charge and slapped him gently across the shoulder, as if to shock the despondency from him. “Rest and a strong drink. What do you do say?”

But the clairvoyant shook his head. “I don't need rest, or a strong drink, Noah. I just need to get this … this malaise off my mind.”

“And what exactly is this malaise?”

“A most ghastly feeling. About the world.”

“For Christ's sake, Ethan!” muttered Noah, taking a drag on his cigarette and slipping a hand into his suit pocket. “Can you not save the apocalyptic visions for your performances? These emotional outbursts are exactly what your act has been missing recently. What our paying public are wanting. Terror! Revelation! Excitement!” He scrunched his chin into the neck of his shirt. “Try not to use up all your energy when there's no one around to witness it, dear fellow!”

“But this feeling, it's been nagging at me for days.”

“Probably the chicken salad you had in the Lancaster. I warned you at the time to eat only beef in those places. You never risk poultry at a steak-house.”

“There's something coming, Noah,” said Ethan, growing ever more serious.

“Yes, so you said,” replied Noah.

“A war.”

“A war?” said the agent, and he frowned, as if the word unsettled him. “Whatever do you mean? Surely you don't mean this damned war in Europe?”