by D K Girl
The Bandalore: Pitch & Sickle Book One
The Diabolus Chronicles, Volume 1
D K Girl
Published by Danielle K Girl, 2021.
This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.
THE BANDALORE: PITCH & SICKLE BOOK ONE
First edition. February 25, 2021.
Copyright © 2021 D K Girl.
ISBN: 978-1732536876
Written by D K Girl.
Also by D K Girl
Metal Angels
Metal Angels - Part One
Metal Angels - Part Two
Metal Angels - Part Three
Metal Angels - Part Four
The Diabolus Chronicles
The Bandalore: Pitch & Sickle Book One (Coming Soon)
Standalone
Ending Altered
Watch for more at D K Girl’s site.
Contents
Title Page
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Your name
Your address
Your phone number
Your email address
Your agent’s name
Your agent’s address
82,200 words.
THE DIABOLUS CHRONICLES - THE BANDALORE
by Danielle
Chapter 1
Silas Mercer was dying. And he found himself in a watery grave, sinking ever deeper. Endless torrents of bitter, cold fluid breached his nostrils, tearing at his throat and making its way deep inside him. The liquid filled him to the very brim, causing such a weight as to make it quite impossible he could ever pull himself upwards, towards that minuscule pinprick of light that taunted him.
Was it the sun that lessened above him? Or was he not so alone as he imagined? A rescuer peering into the oily depths in search of him. Silas knew not where he was nor how. Only that life was deserting him.
Help me.
His cries bubbled around him, serving only to allow more of the punishing waters to enter him. How his lungs ached, the ferocity certain to crack his ribs. Silas kicked and flailed and raised arms of lead to reach in vain at the fading light. Ever downward he travelled, where the darkness was ripe with unseen horrors. The pressure grew upon him threatening to shatter his very skull. A dull throb cursed him all the while, an ache at his temple he did not dare touch at for fear of finding his bone cracked.
The air, what little of it remained, fled his lungs entirely. And the darkness consumed him, pressing his lids tight against the softness of his eyeballs.
A moment, an hour, a day or a year passed by and at last his eyelids raised.
He lay upon his back. The darkness had not fled, but the fiendish waters did not seek to penetrate him so. Silas sucked in a breath of such magnitude he felt as though he might take in all the air in the world. Now his lungs faced a new punisher, the sear of stale air over flesh rubbed raw by the assault of the water. Silas released an anguished, haggard cry. He threw out his arms and found a fresh enemy. Barely had his arms left his sides and they were halted by a solid barrier. Silas kicked his feet, only to find he could barely raise them more than an inch. Fear burrowed beneath his skin and made its prickling way about his body. Blind, Silas pressed at his surrounds and found them all too wanting. He lay in a box, one that offered only the merest of movement.
The scream tore its way from his core and dug its claws into his innards all the way along its path, bursting from his mouth with all the force of the terror that had birthed it.
‘Help me!’ The words tumbled from him. ‘Help me!’
Silas rocked and punched and kicked with all the might he could summon, his cries thrusting back at him in the confined space, loud in his ears. He was dizzy with panic and desperation. At times he imagined he heard other sounds about him. The strangest jangling of a bell in the distance. But when he dared still himself a moment Silas was plunged into a silence so deep he could not bare it. So he rocked and punched and kicked anew. But he fought a stalwart enemy. One that did not yield no matter the assault he levelled at it. His energies ran from him, his strength growing as weak as his cries.
When he at last lay still, sobbing into the darkness he heard it. A thud above him. Followed by another, and another, so rapid in their succession and clear in their source. Someone dug for him.
Now Silas knew it for certain. He lay in his grave.
A brilliant desperation overtook him and Silas shouted and punched and cried out for saving.
‘I’m here, I’m here, I’m here.’ His voice, so terribly overwrought, cracked and pitched and the words were barely born at all. ‘Here, here. Here.’ He sputtered and gasped.
The next thud was right above him. Aimed at the barrier that held him from the world. Hot tears pricked at his eyes, burning their way free. Falling in ever greater cascades as a voice rang clear.
‘Fear not, my lad. We’ll soon have you upright again.’
How heavenly that voice sounded, how carefree and pleasant. Silas’s cries hacked at his chest.
The world lightened. The air was cool and caressed his skin like the very feathers of a lover’s fan. A silvery light was gentle against him but his fragile eyes caused him to squint through his tears. Was that the moon that hung like a round, white angel in the sky? Whatever the case it was the most beautiful sight he had ever witnessed. Silas sucked in a new breath. The rich, dank scent of turned earth embraced his tortured nostrils.
‘Welcome back, dear chap.’ A face just as round as the angelic moon in the sky appeared over him. A full-cheeked elderly man of Oriental persuasion. ‘Do take it easy, death does take a toll on one.’
But dead man or not, Silas would spend not one more moment in these confines. With a raw sob he launched himself out of his grave, clawing at the rise of earth about him, pulling himself ever higher. His fingers found the coarseness of a rope and clung to it. The jangling of the bell returned once more, not a figment of his burdened imagination at all but clear and crisp upon the air.
‘Do let go of that rope dear boy, you’ll wake the rest of the dead.’
The amiable man’s request was made politely enough but Silas would no sooner let loose the rope than he would lay back down in his coffin. Mingling with the frantic ringing of the bell were the animalistic sounds he made as he clambered back into the world, guttural grunts and hisses mixed with rib-snapping sobs, and he could not deny that he was nearer to beast than man. His entire body shook so hard his teeth rattled in his head. Spittle ran from his mouth and cries and groans jerked from him.
‘Silas, calm down.’
This voice was new and foreign and most certainly of the female persuasion. But he cared little for it at the moment. Silas had only one purpose. To be free of his grave. The tolling of the bell guided him. As it had guided his saviour to him. Though why his grave had been marked with such an alarm he cared not. He would care for nothing until he emerged fully from that dark hole in the ground.
‘Silas, Silas, please!’
He flailed his arms and drove his feet into the soft earth. ‘Let me out! Let me out, I’ll not be buried again.’
The last of his words were more screech than speech. His tears made the w
orld a terrible blur. A shape appeared before him and Silas bared his teeth. He’d be stopped by no one. ‘Out of my way.’
A sudden blow struck at his cheek. A stinging slap that snapped his head about.
Silas blinked, his breath coming in shudders. The world trembled and revealed itself anew. No more did the malodor of the earth fill his scenes rather it was the richness of jasmine upon the air. Silas found himself upon a hard surface, the softness of the earth disappeared. The air was pleasantly warm against his face.
‘Mr Mercer?’ The woman spoke once more, her voice as soft as a summer breeze. ‘Can you hear me?’
He nodded, somewhat numbly. His body was warm, and his hair was damp, drips glancing at his shoulders. He wiped a hand across his eyes.
The graveyard was certainly gone. For it had not been there at all this day.
Silas knelt in the parlour of his own cottage. The one he’d called home for these past few, strange weeks. The fire crackled away cheerfully in the hearth, candles lit upon the windowsills, his favourite armchair sitting empty and waiting.
She waited on him too. The woman who had spoken to him, and very likely struck him. Her midnight blue gown, trimmed with black lace, spilled about her almost touching at his knees. The skirt held darker patches where dampness clung to the material.
‘Jane,’ he croaked.
The woman nodded, the golden tone of her skin warmed by the glow of the fire, the dancing light catching at the jewels about her neck and weighing down the lobes of her ears. Heavy also was the waft of jasmine. Wherever Jane went, her perfume marked her passage.
‘Oh Silas, I must apologise,’ she said quietly. ‘I had hoped bathing might relax you but I see it’s done quite the opposite.’
‘Bathing?’ Silas frowned. All at once his jumbled thoughts cleared. ‘Oh my goodness.’
His hands flew to his lap where his manhood nestled between his broad thighs, on glaring display. Silas was entirely naked.
‘Calm down.’ Jane rose to her feet with a coy smile and a rustle of silk. ‘It is hardly anything I’ve not seen before. Who do you think bathed you while you recuperated in those first weeks after you arrived at Holly Village? You’ve nothing at all to be ashamed of, in fact if I were you I’d be showing off that splendid body at every moment I could.’
Silas’s face burned. He’d actually not considered such a thing at all, not with so many other things to occupy his thoughts. Rising from the dead did tend to distract one from the smaller things. The idea of Jane seeing him so exposed made his stomach knot. He scanned the room in search of a covering. The towel was draped over the second armchair, a creaky leather chair that he did not favour. And was quite out of reach.
‘Could you please pass me the towel,’ he coughed.
‘Of course.’ Jane’s gown whispered as she moved, at a pace far too slow for Silas’s liking. ‘Are you quite recovered? That was a rather bad turn you took. You’ve not left much water behind.’
She nodded over his shoulder. A copper tub sat just behind him, steam still rising from the water’s within, though those waters were indeed rather low. The floorboards about him were drenched, the edge of the rug set beneath his favourite armchair darkened with the stain of the water.
He recalled it all too well now. Dipping his toes into the water, sinking his body into the depths. And finding himself going under.
‘I…I drowned,’ he whispered.
‘You could barely fit that grand body in the tub,’ Jane laughed, light as the twitter of a sparrow. ‘There is hardly a chance you were going to drown, but you went quite mad for fear of it.’
‘No,’ Silas stared at the puddle surrounding him. ‘Not here. Not now. I think it was how I died.’
He could still feel the burn of the water against the back of his throat. His heart thunderous with the memory of that dreadful clutch of the water.
‘Truly?’ Jane returned to his side and draped the towel gently across his shoulders. He shivered, the heat of his exertions abandoning him. ‘I’m sorry I pushed you to take a bath then, I had no idea.’ She rubbed at his back and he leaned into her. Since the moment he’d set eyes upon her Jane had brought a sense of calm to his chaotic world. Somehow just her smile soothed him. ‘That is all behind you, Mr Mercer. It is all done with.’
She spoke casually, as though dying could be gotten over as simply as a pulled tooth. He clutched the towel to him, not certain he was entirely covered but too distracted to mind. He turned to peer at the tub with its raised edge where a head might rest and enjoy the extravagance of bathing.
‘The tub reminded me of my coffin too much. That was what began it, I’m quite sure. The tub was far too small.’ Silas squeezed his eyes shut, recalling the anxious twist of his chest as he had sunk into the warm waters. He’d though it merely a show of nerves considering he was to leave the Village for the first time in four weeks tonight. Silas was to escort Jane Handel to the Marquess of Ailsa’s annual ball in her capacity as a member of the Order of the Golden Dawn, an organisation he knew as little of as he did its head, the cheerful grave-digging Mr Ahari.
Jane sighed. ‘There is no doubt, it is rather a snug fit for you, but I’m afraid all but the most enormous of tubs would be, Mr Mercer. You’re rather a giant of a man. But I shall not ever push you to bath again, rest assured. We don’t want those bothersome memories popping up to surprise you again. I don’t think the floorboards would survive it, to be honest. The washbasin will do just fine.’
‘Yes, yes, it will.’ He forced a smile to his lips. ‘Most definitely.’
Jane did not exaggerate to call him a giant. Silas was as broad as he was tall, dwarfing the petite figure of the woman who leaned over him. He stared at his reflection in the puddle surrounding him. He appeared every bit as unsteady as he felt, a wildness to his brown eyes. The damp waves of his coal black hair tickled at the lobes of his ears. Silas peered at the stranger, for that was what he saw; a man with solid shoulders and muscled thick arms and torso, a broad face and solid flat nose, a decidedly thick neck that he did not much admire. Nor recognise. Silas might walk and talk and breath once again, but death had stolen from him. He could recall no family he to wonder about, no home to consider returning to, no history that might anchor him more firmly into this life.
He shrugged against the unpleasant weight of a mind half empty. ‘Do you think this to mean my memories might return?’
Jane lifted her narrow shoulders. ‘I am no expert in reanimation, I’m afraid. So far as I knew your memories of your past life died with you, but I suppose the moment of death might be rather more difficult to destroy than that of your first kiss.’
Jane brushed at the folds of her midnight blue satin gown. She was young, he imagined her to be barely twenty years of age, and quite sublime with her sun-kissed skin. Her chocolate brown hair was pulled up to sit high on her head, curled in a bun held fast with a floral diamond clasp, and her corset was pulled in tight at her waist to the point where he wondered how she took a breath at all. Jane’s breasts were squeezed high by the edge of the corset, mounds of soft gold that would sit most perfectly in the palm of Silas’s hands. He dropped his head, mortified by the sudden tightness at his groin that followed such a wayward thought.
‘Should we inform Mr Ahari of this?’ Silas said hoarsely, for want of anything better to say. ‘I often dream of the time he dug me from my grave, but I’ve never sensed the waters. And never so vividly as this.’
Jane pursed lips that had been touched most delicately with rouge. ‘I shall be sure to inform Mr Ahari and the Lady Satine both, for they do ask so often for news of you.’ If Mr Ahari was a mystery, the Lady Satine was doubly so. As he and Jane conversed over endless games of cards and chess she had informed him Lady Satine not only owned Holly Village where they resided, but that she was a rather important figure within the Order. Little other information had been forthcoming. ‘And it’s best we ensure this isn’t a sign that you are coming apart at the seams.’
After scrambling from his grave and into Mr Ahari’s arms, Silas fell into a dreamless sleep, waking to find himself here in the cottage. Resting in a bed that was only just long enough for him to stretch out in, and so deeply fatigued it took an enormous effort to keep his eyes open. Mr Ahari had visited just once. The man with the permanently etched smile had poked and prodded at him like a doctor scrutinising a patient. With much muttering he had finally sniffed, nodded, and left with instructions to be informed immediately if Silas should note any untoward leakages of bodily fluids or splitting of skin. Apparently a body did not always enjoy being returned from the dead.
‘Oh I’m quite sure we are not to loose you anytime soon, Mr Mercer.’ Jane’s smile was radiant. ‘Which is quite wonderful as I’m rather getting used to having you about. It’s been so dull in the Village for some time.’
Holly Village was the oddest of accommodations. Beautiful for certain, the gated community held stunning gardens and a pretty brook within its high walls. But of its twelve houses, different styles each, only two of them appeared to have residents living within; Silas’s cottage, and Jane’s more elaborate residence with it turreted tower and carved gargoyles beneath the eaves.
Jane stepped away, shaking her skirts to rid them off any dampness. ‘Do you know, I should think the Marquess of Ailsa’s ball is exactly what you need right now, despite your apprehension. The Marquess has a magnificent collection of champagnes, all rather worth dying for.’ She pressed her fingers to her lips. ‘Dear me, I do apologise. That was poor taste. But the champagne is not, I can assure you.’ She tilted her head to look at him. ‘I dare say you will excite the appetite of many of the attendees. You cut a rather fine figure. Come now, raise a smile, Mr Mercer. You shall love it I’m sure. To be a part of the Order is quite the stylish thing at the moment, thanks to those American Fox sisters and all their talk of spiritualism.’ Jane laughed. ‘Society is quite alight with talk of the arcane. You have timed reanimation perfectly. The Order no longer needs to skulk around in the shadows, with fear of its members being named witch or devil and stuck upon a dunking chair or on a flaming pyre. Now we can stride into mansions and dance about the ballrooms. I cannot tell you how many invitations I alone have received from lords and barons and even a prince or two, hoping to outshine their fellow nobles with a seance to remember, or a fortune telling that leaves them with shivers. It’s delightful.’
