The Conqueror Worm
Page 17
With a savage roar, the priest sawed Carnivale's head from his neck and buried the Grand Inquisitor in his breast, staking his heart to the basilica floor. “Return to the darkness,” he muttered, yanking the blade free and shambling away from the corpse.
It was done. The black bishop of Bologna was dead and the sacrament of the Twisted Nail had not been given that night in the Basilica of San Petronio. Ossian should have been happy, should have been proud of the work he'd done, but as he looked out across the shadowed church, he couldn't help but let Carnivale's final words weigh him down.
“The transformation of Bologna is temporarily prevented, but all over this land the dark sacrament has been given and the legions of Hell now walk the Earth.”
The quiet night that greeted him through the shattered basilica windows, he knew, would last for an entire twenty-four hours. No matter his minor victory, The Feast of the Twisted Nail had been a success.
Sheathing his blade, Ossian walked to the front of the church, crossing the aisles which teemed with wreckage and gore. He approached the battered altar, spotting the metal vessel that'd contained the cremains of local victims on the floor, and found it still mostly full. This he picked up and carried from the church, and when he had exited out into the Piazza Maggiore, he removed the lid and scattered the ashes on the wind.
25
“You killed him? You really did it, you crazy bastard?” Elio asked him some version of this multiple times before he finally believed it.
Cesare, curious about what they'd seen in the church, couldn't wrap his head around a demon more fearsome than those they'd met on the road. “How big was it, really?”
For the remainder of their stay, Bologna remained a ghost town. Those heretics who had managed to escape the basilica before Carnivale's rampage went into hiding or left the city altogether, for fear that the mad priest would strike them down. Returning to the office building where Elio and Cesare had been taking refuge, Ossian encountered no one.
Finding his companions not a little shaken but, thankfully, largely unharmed, Ossian shared with them the results of his decisive battle against the bishop, though celebrations were few and the conversation quickly turned to the more pressing matter at hand: The Feast of the Twisted Nail. In other cities influenced by Avignon, the dark sacrament had been performed and countless people had elected to become demons. This meant that, no matter where they went, they would be hounded now by masses of infernal creatures whose strength put that of ordinary humans to shame.
The mood was dark, and no matter how many times Cesare tried to lighten it with congratulations about the slaying of the bishop, Ossian could think of nothing else but the difficulty of the path ahead. That night, he bathed himself at the spring, washed the blood from his clothing and returned to hold a brief Mass with his fellows in the office building. They enjoyed a simple meal and, for the first time in days, enjoyed rest.
When they awoke hours later, at a time when the sun should have been some hours risen, they were presented only with darkness outside their window.
The sight of that endless night chilled the blood, promising of the darkness that would soon wash over the entire Earth.
The malign miracle had come to pass. Earth now teemed with infernal spirits on a scale hitherto unheard of.
For the better part of a day, the trio took to their wounds and drafted plans for their further travels. Elio, determined to follow the priest to the end of the path and strike back against the dark forces that'd robbed him of a family, insisted he knew the way to Genoa; a major stop on Ossian's planned route to Avignon. “It's going to be rough, but I know the way. There are a number of smaller cities on the way there, too, where we might be able to find some more help.”
“Or where we might encounter more demons like that bishop,” offered Cesare with a frown. The youth had no choice but to come along as well. There was nowhere for him to go in Bologna, and to send him out alone to find his own way was incredibly dangerous. The only option was for him to continue traveling with the priest, who would do his best to protect him and to, someday, find him a safe place to settle permanently.
In the light of the moon, the three of them packed what little they owned, refreshed their canteens at the spring and started in the direction of Genoa, Italy. Saying little, their bodies aching for the battles of previous days and hurting extra in anticipation of struggles to come, they set off into the night that would not end.
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About the Author
Once upon a time, a young Ambrose Ibsen discovered a collection of ghost stories on his father's bookshelf. He was never the same again. Apart from horror fiction, he enjoys good coffee, brewed strong.
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