The Conqueror Worm

by Ambrose Ibsen

  "Sure," said the priest, stretching. His body was pounding. The beat of his pulse was felt in each of his limbs, the skin warm and red as his insides fought against rampant infection. He wore a veil of sweat on his forehead; remnants of a low-grade fever, possibly.

  "Appreciate it," replied Elio, standing up and offering his companion the chair. He combed through his curly black hair but hesitated to go lay down. Sitting at the hearth, he stared blankly into the darkened room.

  "There will come a time when we can mourn all that we've lost, Elio. But at present, we must focus instead on the job ahead, and on what we still risk losing."

  The man shrugged weakly at this platitude and said nothing for a long while. Closing his tired eyes, he let his head droop and then said, "What a cruel God we've got, father."

  Ossian didn't reply. He might've lectured the man, fed him some snippet of Scripture which said otherwise, but decided against it. No matter his faith, the priest couldn't deny the man his discontent. Plopping down into the chair and looking out into the darkened streets, he tried to imagine what Bologna must have been like before the disaster. Once, those streets would probably have been crawling with people no matter the hour. To look upon them now, in untrodden disrepair, was to feel a profound sadness above and beyond the anger and despair that already shook him at all hours.

  He'd done a lot of praying since being rescued by Elio and Cesare, but no matter how often he reached out to God, he could not let go of his rage. It possessed him, filled his every waking thought and haunted his dreams. Possibly it was sinful for him to so revel in wrath, and he wondered if he was disappointing the Lord with his ceaseless anger.

  The other possibility, far more welcome, was that God had sent him this anger as a tool to utilize in purging the Earth of darkness.

  At the start of his journey, Ossian had severely underestimated the darkness. In fact, he hadn't even understood the nature of his enemy, had no idea what he was up against. His superiors had briefed him thoroughly, had spoken of heretics, but had not revealed to him the existence of demons on the earthly plane. His previous experiences as a parish exorcist hadn't prepared him for these battles, either.

  The world is more far-gone than anyone in Rome knows. It may be too late to claw back onto solid ground. The species may have been forfeit, sent over the precipice. We made our move too late.

  It was not his place to decide the state of the human race or of the world; as a servant of God, his only job was to fulfill his duties. But in that darkened room, the voices and actions of his torturers made all the more real to him in memory for the pervasive darkness, he was shaken into doubting his mission. He would follow through, strike down any threat to good men, to the church he served, but it would have been a lie for him to claim he was doing it for any reason aside from his own anger.

  What had begun as a crusade for Christ had transformed, at least partly, into a quest for revenge.

  When the regime in Bologna had been toppled, he would move on to the next city, unseating whatever evil he found, and he'd continue that cycle until he arrived in Avignon. Once there, perhaps he really would encounter "Hell on Earth", as the Vatican emissaries had claimed. It didn't matter, though. He was determined to trace this evil to its fountainhead and would run the anti-pope of Avignon through with his sword if that was what the job called for.

  Losing himself in violent fantasies, Ossian saw something moving on the street below that snapped him from his thoughts. It was a small, dark shape some way down the road. It approached the building in short bursts of hopping, would pause to sniff the air before hurling its furry body some feet further.

  A black rabbit.

  The sight of the animal should not have distressed him; if anything, he should have gone after it for the meat it would provide his company. But instead, the animal teased out a particular memory and he found himself sitting back, out of the window, against the wall. A wave of nebulous dread struck him dead on.

  The rabbit was somehow familiar.

  The young Aristide had gone chasing after a rabbit with Cesare some days prior, only to be murdered by the bishop in a shaded wood. Possibly this was the same rabbit, the same portent, and the superstitious part of the priest made him want to stay out of the animal's way. Elio had finally begun to nod off, and Cesare was well and asleep, kicking feebly as he dreamt.

  The rabbit hopped past the window, pausing only briefly, and then turned a corner towards a woodsy section of town. With the animal out of his sights, Ossian felt a weight removed from his chest, could bring himself to breathe more easily.

  For all the damage done to his body, Ossian's soul felt stronger than ever. In his time of suffering he had wavered, wished for the end, but having pulled through the worst he was now filled with a new, almost demonic vigor. Massaging the back of his hand, which had been rid of skin, he grit his teeth and felt the raw tissue beneath his bandage. It would take some time for such wounds to heal, and when they did the scarification would be immense. "A good thing I've no ambitions as a hand model," he'd told Elio not long after being rescued.

  The priest prayed as he sat in the window, his eyes scanning the world below and his ears attuned to any sound that broke out beyond the whistling of the wind. It was a temperate night, but the breeze had an unpleasant bite to it that made him yearn for a fire. It was when he was about to start a small blaze in the brick hearth that he spied the dark, huddled form standing in the street outside.

  It was man-shaped, stood in the dense shadow that existed between two tottering and abandoned houses, and exuded an undeniable aura of observation. The priest knew himself being watched from eyes within that darkness, scrutinized by something reptilian and cold. Ossian's hand sought out the Grand Inquisitor in the next moment and he took a step back from the window, meeting the furtive, insectoid gaze cooly. "Elio, wake up," he muttered. "We've got company."

  The man had barely been asleep in the first place and took a deep breath, sitting up. "Do we?" he asked, outstretching an arm and searching for his sledge sleepily. "Who is it?"

  Gaze narrowing, Ossian gave a half shake of his head. Keeping his voice down, he replied, "I'm not sure. It... it isn't like the others." The pain wreaking his body melted into the background as the adrenaline took over.

  "What's that supposed to mean?" asked Elio, approaching the window. He'd picked up the great hammer and was wiping at his eyes when he looked out into the night. Studying their surroundings minutely, he eventually shrugged. "I don't see anyone. Sure you're not just being paranoid?"

  "No, there's definitely someone there. Look, between those houses―" The priest's breath caught in his throat as he looked outside once more, finding the shadows between the tenements bereft of any lurking presence. "I swear... there was someone standing in the shadows. I felt their eyes on me. I'd bet my life on it, Elio."

  Scratching at his scalp and yawning, Elio came away from the window. "Well, they aren't there now, at any rate. Who do you think it was?"

  Ossian might have given his honest opinion―that it was a servant of the bishop's sent to sniff them out―if not for the sound of a door creaking open from somewhere in the building. It was the familiar groaning of the hinges on the downstairs entry door, and the sound stopped them both cold. More alarming still were the slow, even steps that began to sound on the rickety staircase just outside their door. Someone was coming up to meet them.

  Waking Cesare with a swift kick, Ossian threw a hand over the boy's mouth and dragged him off into the corner while Elio stood beside the door, hammer raised over his head. When the youth had been urged to keep his mouth shut, Ossian approached the door carefully, blade held out before him.

  The footsteps stopped, and the boards just outside the door to their room creaked with a mysterious load. Whoever it was that now paid them a visit was in no rush to reveal themselves, and stood silently on the other side of the door as if waiting to be invited in. Ultimately, Ossian chose to call out, bandaged hand wrapped around th
e hilt of his sword and green eyes set narrowly in the search for movement.

  "Who's there? Reveal yourself!" Ossian licked his lips, his dry tongue raking the wounds on them.

  Some moments passed with no reply. Elio turned, wide-eyed, to the priest, hammer still poised to smash whoever came in through the door.

  Then, a voice.

  It was not quite masculine, nor was it feminine, the voice that drifted in from the hall. There was something curious about its calm androgyny which seemed to the priest to harbor calculated malignity. Even had it called out a friendly greeting, kind words would have never sounded so perverse as when transmitted by such a mouth as this.

  The figure outside the door purred and said, in the local Italian, "Fammi entrare." Let me in. In a deeper, mannish tone, with one hand pressed firmly against the door so that it creaked in its frame, the visitor added in perfect English, "The night is so cold. Might I warm myself at your hearth, brothers?"

  Cesare stared at the door, picking up the leg of a broken chair and holding it to his breast. "W-we're not going to let it in, are we?" he whispered.

  Ossian shook his head. "Who are you?" he demanded, taking a step towards the door.

  "Merely a pilgrim in search of warmth," mewled the visitor nauseously. Alien fingers rapped a quiet cadence against the door. "Won't you let me in, brothers?"

  Elio chuckled. "You don't sound like any brother of mine," he said.

  The door rattled. "I wasn't talking to you, you crippled imbecile. I was talking to the priest," shouted the intruder, voice sinking further into a recognizably demonic octave.

  The air left the room. Elio took a step back, letting the sledge droop, and turned to the priest with wide eyes.

  "I have no plans to let you into this room, though I expect you'll still invite yourself in, won't you?" said the priest, urging Elio back silently. "Your kind has never been much for manners, in my experience."

  The calm was back in the visitor's voice, and it gave a laugh that sounded like so many chitinous insects scrabbling against one another. "Well, you're right about that, father. But here I thought your kind were accommodating to a fault. Strange times we're living in when a good priest will not open his door to a kindly visitor in the night."

  Ossian scoffed. "There's nothing kindly about you."

  The laughing made a reprise. "Right again." The knob began to turn and the door was pushed open very slightly. A sliver of the dark hall became visible, and standing outside it Ossian glimpsed the fringes of a pus-colored hand squeezed into a black glove. "I'll kill the cripple first. He won't get a single swing of that hammer in before I've gone and spilled his guts. Then it'll be your turn, father. I'll break you, piece by piece, till you spit on that fucking Christ you love so much. The boy, though..." A smile grazed unseen lips. "I'll corrupt him, body and soul, before carving him up."

  Elio scrambled away from the door as it fell open further. The individual standing at the threshold was dressed in tight black clothing, and though it kept its face low, there was a certain unmistakable serpentine quality to it. A flat, white and hairless head that terminated in a broad snout and wide mouth from whence there spilled a fat, pale tongue.

  "You've been sent by Carnivale, haven't you?" snarled Ossian, taking the lead position and brandishing the Grand Inquisitor. "I'll send you back to your master piecemeal, give him an idea of what awaits him."

  There was a rumbling in the old building that seemed to issue from its most recent guest. Reaching out with two gloved hands, the serpentine visitor loosed a bestial cry and summoned from the darkness at his back a number of thick, black tentacles. The columns of midnight-colored flesh slapped against the walls and floor, writhed out of the darkness in mounds like so many breeding snakes, till the entrance of the room had been completely blocked off. The tendrils writhed and stretched till they spread to the nearby corners, grew across the floor and ceiling.

  Ossian sprang forth, swinging his sword wildly and carving numerous of the black growths away. They struck the floor with a terrible thud, convulsing like bait worms skewered on a hook, but for every one he struck down, two more seemed to appear. Growing closer to the pale stranger, the priest noticed that the mass of tendrils was sprouting from his back, were extensions of his body. Where pale arms had once hung only tentacles thrashed now. The visitor's eyes went black and, falling into a crouch, the assassin began to charge into the room, barreling into the priest and knocking him onto the dusty floor.

  Elio had backed away, was standing before Cesare and landing many hammer-blows onto the encroaching tentacles. The sledge fractured floorboards and demon flesh alike, making the entire room quiver. Though he put up a good fight, there were simply too many of the tentacles to strike down, and when he invariably slowed he found himself getting grabbed by them. One found its way around his beefy arm, and he fell into a tug of war with the demon, attempting to free it.

  Cesare jabbed at the black limbs with his chair leg. "What is this thing? Ossian, kill him! Cut his damn head off, something!"

  The priest sank a heel into the intruder's belly and regained his feet, throwing out his sword just in time to parry a bundle of black tentacles. The assassin's mouth fell open wide, and another tentacle leapt out at the priest, which only narrowly missed. Ossian struck the demon in the chest and sent it reeling, however the tendrils kept him anchored and prevented any loss of balance. Finding himself batting away strike after strike, Ossian felt something thick slithering about his shoulders.

  He'd been careless.

  A black length of sulfurous flesh made its way to his throat and began to rapidly constrict.

  "Damn it―" Ossian blurted. The pressure to his windpipe was such that he could no longer draw breath, and the squeeze was wreaking havoc on the softer tissues in his neck. He felt blood pooling in his head, felt a thunderous pulse in his temples and ears as circulation came to a screeching halt. His vision and hearing went in and out as he struggled to loose himself from the demon's grasp, and though he cut wildly at the tendrils that surrounded him, he failed to strike the one that now wrung the life from him.

  Laughing, the demon lifted Ossian into the air, giving him a little shake and threatening to snap his neck. "I'm going to keep you alive just long enough to let you watch your friends die. Here, shall I start with the boy or the cripple? I wager the youth will taste better―"

  From just outside the priest's blurred periphery came a sudden burst of movement. There was a crunching sound, as of wood being split, and the tentacle around his throat suddenly loosened its grip. Barely able to maintain consciousness, Ossian hit the floor, the Grand Inquisitor clattering against the floorboards which were now running slick with blood. Turning dizzy eyes upward, he spied its source.

  Elio had rushed up to the assassin, and with a single hammer blow had caught the dark thing in the side of its flat, white head. The skull had been laid waste to on its right side, and a black eyeball had been dislodged from the right socket. The damage didn't stop there, however. The sledge, its tip dipped in concrete, had had such momentum as to carry it deeper, coming to rest somewhere in the demon's breast. From the cavernous wound there sprang a wild current of hot, dark blood.

  Staggering back, the assassin crashed to the floor and the black tendrils were immediately withdrawn. Masterless limbs thrashed now against the floor as the last traces of life sprang through the cadaver. What remained, when Ossian had finally drawn enough air into his lungs to stand upright, was a seeping mound of gore left partially buried in the busted floorboards.

  Dripping in the intruder's blood, Elio fell back against the hearth, dragging his hammer against the floor and frenziedly wiping his face. "How'd you like that?" he asked the corpse, dropping onto the edge of the fireplace and panting.

  There was no time to celebrate, to gloat in their victory. Sheathing his blade, taking up his satchel and waving the others toward the door, Ossian made haste out of the old house. "We need to make ourselves scarce. This mongrel surel
y isn't the only one on the hunt for us," he said, working the soreness out of his neck. "This place is no longer safe."

  There were no arguments. Pausing only to study the corpse with nauseous wonder, Cesare followed close at the priest's heels. Elio, when he'd managed to wipe off a good deal of the assassin's blood, also exited. The trio found themselves standing in the quiet, moonlit road, feeling a terrible new vulnerability. From which corner, which nook the next threat might emerge was uncertain.

  Keeping close to the buildings and minding their backs, they ventured deeper into the abandoned city in search of new shelter.

  19

  The world could offer them no place that was truly safe, but even so the three of them made their home for the rest of the night in a serviceable apartment on the third floor of a building that gave them a much better vantage point of surrounding roads, and which allowed them multiple routes of egress. Save for brief naps, the men did not sleep that night, choosing instead to keep watch and listen on the wind for more of the bishop's headhunters. Meanwhile the boy slept fitfully, stretching out in a dusty recliner whose cushions hadn't been totally ruined by the elements.

  When the morning sun rose, its warm light did little to dispel the gloom which accosted the three of them. If anything, the mood among them only soured, for they could no longer make use of the shadows to hide their movements and evade their foes. There was nothing left to them but confrontation.

  The priest found himself raring to go about his grim work, and when he'd hastened through his breviary, he set about hatching the day's plan. "They've shown their hand. They're desperate to find me because they understand the threat I pose. We're in a position of strength, even if we had a rough time of things last night."

  Elio, less enthusiastic about their prospects, clicked his tongue. "No offense, father, but that's awfully tough talk for someone who got choked by that bastard. You know the bishop's gotta be stronger than that thing was. If we go up against him and all of his cronies, we're going to get crushed. Not to be a downer." Sitting on an old desk, he stretched his crooked foot till the ankle joint popped. "We're going to have to play this really carefully. I want to kill 'em all, but if we don't do it right, then..."