That troubled him. Whenever he killed a man he felt a bit more alive, as if once again he had challenged death and come out the victor. But when he killed the Trolls—who had been hiding away from people and were relatively harmless unless attacked—he felt less alive somehow, as if he lost a bit of vitality with each drop of Nephilim blood that was shed.
However, killing was what he did, what he would continue to do, so he had holed up in this cheap inn looking for an answer in his grimoires. The Vatican paid him well, something he was not about to give up, so he needed to find a way to kill these beings without being affected, some way to harden his soul even more.
The clock tower’s bell struck 1:00 A.M., yet sleep still held no appeal. He was scheduled to sail on the morning tide. A summons from the Vatican lay on the floor where he had flung it yesterday; he hated being summoned. While he could not ignore the order, he had been taken aback to read that he was to present himself in Venice, not Rome, which could be good or bad, very bad.
A deep tremor of sound rolled through the room from somewhere outside. Jordan opened the shutter and peered out. The wind had died down. Under the stars, green ribbons of northern lights danced, showering their faint light on the city, though not enough for him to see clearly. The sound, low-pitched and guttural, repeated. This time he detected a tone of distress. Too tired to read more, too awake to sleep, he strapped on his sword belt and went into the night.
Jordan strode along the wharf, bypassing the occasional patch of ice, until it opened onto a small torchlit square where two richly cloaked and hooded women stood. He could not see their faces. A priest, the long cowl of his black robe marking him as one of Orsini’s exorcists, approached the women. This could be interesting, thought Jordan as he moved into the shadows beside a tall stack of crates, close enough to hear.
“Thank you for accepting Orsini’s invitation to meet and discuss a truce, Grande Sorcière,” the exorcist said without a bow.
Jordan recognized the title. In addition to ruling over the most powerful coven of witches in Europe, the High Coven, the Grande Sorcière was queen of France. This meant that she also covertly controlled the French Church, which competed fiercely and sometimes violently with the Vatican for territory and souls, or at least for tithing payers. She must be trying to expand her church and possibly her coven into Norway, Jordan concluded.
“You will address Us as ‘Your Highness.’ Where is your master?” the Grande Sorcière demanded in French. “We agreed to meet him only because We were already scheduled to be here.”
Switching from Latin to French but ignoring the requested royal address, the exorcist replied, “My cardinal sends his most sincere regrets. Demands of the Church kept him in Rome. He has sent a comfortable ship to carry you there for the meeting.”
“Orsini did not come because he is a liar. We do not need to look into his eyes to know that. He must also be a fool to think he can trick Us into meeting in Rome rather than here on neutral ground. We have no doubts that there he would question Us, then kill Us.”
“My cardinal instructed me to inform you that you’ve no choice in this.”
A rumble of anguish rolled into the square, a sound emitted by a creature in chains led by two robed exorcists. It was larger than a man but smaller than the giants that Jordan had read about. It must be some other form of Nephilim, he thought.
The junior exorcists held the creature still by threatening it with spears tipped with obsidian points while their leader locked its chains to a post.
“We’ve an army of such creatures, impervious to any spell you may cast,” said the leader. He swept his arm toward the Nephilim. “I invite you to try.”
“Joanna, We do not have time to waste here. Use your flame to take control of the creature,” ordered the Grande Sorcière. Her companion held out a box, the light flickering inside revealed it to be made of blue glass. She placed it on the ground and swung open the lid. A flame, about the size of a candle’s, crawled out, multiplied, and quickly became a horde of flames slithering toward the bound creature.
Death flames, Jordan realized, remembering the reference in Marija’s journal to an enchantment used to temporarily govern any living thing, until the spell killed them. The flames swarmed up the creature’s legs and over its chest as it roared in pain, then faded without any further effect.
Jordan was impressed. Death flames were listed as one of the most potent enchantments, and this creature had resisted it. He considered all the mystical dangers awaiting him in the dark places of the world as a Vatican condottiere—not to mention the risks posed by the capricious Vatican itself—and knew the immeasurable value such an unusual creature would be to him.
“If you don’t do as Orsini commands, he’ll unleash an army of these on your coven in Paris,” said the leader.
“We do not believe so. If there were many creatures like this, We would know. Now, We have an appointment with the king to prepare for.” The women walked toward the main street leading from the square.
“We’ll set the creature on you right now if you don’t come with us!” one of the junior exorcists called out.
“Do so and it may survive,” said the Grande Sorcière without looking back, “but none of you would.” They disappeared from sight, out of the torchlight.
Jordan studied the many shadows of the square, picked his path, and crept out toward the creature.
“Why’d you let her go?” demanded the junior exorcist to his superior, fingering the silver medallion hanging from a chain around his neck, his badge of office with the initials VRS visible in high relief. “With this creature we could’ve captured her.”
“Idiot,” snapped the leader. “You don’t take the queen of France on Norwegian soil without starting a war that Orsini doesn’t want yet.” The creature began to bellow and pull at its chains. “Shut it up.”
The junior exorcist stuck the creature in the shoulder with his spear. Something black and viscous oozed out, blistering the skin around the wound. The creature whimpered through clenched teeth.
“Stick it again,” ordered the leader.
The junior exorcist dropped his spear and fell to the ground dead. Before the others could react, Jordan had his bloody knife to the leader’s throat. “Had to do that. I couldn’t watch all three of you, and he was sounding dangerously rash,” said Jordan.
“Who are you? Are you with the High Coven? You tell that witch she is going to regret killing one of Orsini’s men.”
“There’s nothing I’d regret about killing you, so hand me the keys and perhaps it won’t be necessary.”
The leader removed the heavy ring of keys from the pocket of his robe, then spun around, slashed them across Jordan’s face, and moved to run. Jordan sprang forward and caught his opponent’s cowl, pulling him back to slit his throat. “That hurt!” Jordan shouted at him as the man’s life gurgled away. The last exorcist darted into a dark alley. Jordan threw his knife, but the clatter of steel on stone told him he had missed. He considered going after the man. The escaping exorcist did not know who he was, only believed he was with the High Coven. Best to let him go, then, Jordan thought.
He picked up the spear and tossed it aside. The creature squatted on its haunches, watching him with solid black eyes.
“I killed them for you,” Jordan said.
“That made Ty glad,” said Ty, his voice gravelly. “Are you going to hurt Ty now?”
“No, Ty. Would you like me to kill more exorcists for you?”
Ty slowly nodded.
“Was the exorcist telling the truth? Are there more like you?”
Ty shook his head. “Ty has no brothers or sisters. Ty born different than Ty’s clan, they scared of Ty. They force Ty to leave, let exorcists capture Ty.”
“So there’s just one like you, and you’ve no clan anymore.”
A giant gray tear slid down Ty’s face. “Something inside Ty always hurts Ty, always pain. Ty not want to live.”
“Either you�
��ll live with the exorcists, who’ll abuse you, or you can live with me.” Jordan had made his voice stern, but he softened it as he went on. “You and I will be a clan, and I won’t harm you. I can kill any exorcists that bother you, but you must bind yourself to me. You must protect me from everyone else, human or inhuman. Will you do that?”
Ty nodded.
“You must give your bond. My name is Jordan.”
“Ty bonds Ty to Jordan.”
“Good,” said Jordan, retrieving the key ring from the dead exorcist. “Do as I tell you and everything will be all right. You’ll not be chained again.”
The prospects of future witch-hunts and his summons to the Vatican’s Venice office did not feel quite as worrisome as they had a few hours ago.
The tide went out early that morning. Ty had carried Jordan’s trunks into the captain’s cabin, then carried the captain’s things out, to his muted complaints. In the intensity of the night before, Jordan had not thought about how he was going explain his new bodyguard, but it turned out not to be necessary—no one challenged him with Ty following one step behind.
5
The two strains [angels and humans] united with each other to execute all kinds of iniquitous deeds. The result of the marriages between them were the Nephilim, whose sins brought the deluge upon the world. . . . The flood was produced by a union of the male waters, which are above the firmament, and the female waters issuing from the earth. . . . Upon the entreaties of Noah, God sent down the angel Raphael, who banished nine-tenths of the unclean spirits [Nephilim] from the earth, leaving but one-tenth for Mastema [chief of the Nephilim], to punish sinners through them.
—Book of Jubilees (circa 100 BCE), Dead Sea Scrolls
Republic of Venice
Six Weeks Later
Sunlight rarely found its way down to the dark ribbon of water where the narrow boat slipped silently along. Venice, standing in a lagoon of the Adriatic Sea off the northeast corner of the re-created Papal States, was a city of shadowy passages and the capital of its own republic where trade ruled. Trade that consisted of clandestine activities and information as often as it did in more tangible, but less valuable, commodities.
Jordan, wrapped in his heavy cloak to ward off the December cold, sat impassively in the center of the sandolo, unconcerned that the boat’s freeboard was pressed down to within an inch of the water, threatening to swamp them. The cause of the boat’s distress was the heavy Ty, who stood behind him working the boat’s single long oar with one hand. Jordan had only to point a gloved finger to indicate a turn from the Rio Nuovo canal into Rio di San Pantalon and a slight movement of the giant hand on the oar glided the sandolo around the corner without a drop of water splashing onto Jordan’s boots. The boat turned onto Rio delle Muneghete, traveled a short distance along the long, curved canal, then gently bumped against a small dock. Jordan stepped out, tied up the sandolo, and glanced about before opening the door to the building. Ty followed him inside.
When Jordan received the Vatican’s summons to this address, he applied his considerable talents to discovering what went on here. He learned that it was in this nondescript stone building, in the midst of a jumble of similarly nondescript buildings, where four decades earlier Egidio Albornoz, before becoming a cardinal and the most feared man in Europe, first came to plot the return of the pope to Rome. The French had successfully conspired to move the papacy to Avignon, leaving Rome and the Papal States to fracture into warring cities. Albornoz’s audacious plan was to raise an army of condottieri, reconquer the old Papal States, and then forcibly extract the pope from Avignon, restoring the Roman Church. The English, chafing at the French controlling the papacy, helped by sending Sir John Hawkwood. Hawkwood took the assumed name of Giovanni Acuto and turned out to be as bloodthirsty as Albornoz. When the chancellor of Cesena refused to pledge to the new Roman pope, Hawkwood had the city sacked and every man, woman, and child disemboweled—or, if they begged in a pleasing fashion, beheaded.
Albornoz, named “Angel of Peace” by the Church, restructured the Vatican as he wished, writing new doctrine and canonical laws, the Constitutiones Sanctæ Matris Ecclesiæ. Jordan had tracked down an unrecorded draft when he arrived in Venice five days ago. Now he recalled one clause in particular: “Whoever controls literacy, and the written word, controls history and can reshape the world to the way it was intended to be, to the greater glory of God and his True Church. The common man, all except God granted nobility and those ordained by the True Church, must be kept safe from Satan by keeping them from knowing his demons and their Nephilim offspring. Only officers of the True Church can confront such malevolent creatures without becoming corrupt.” Albornoz had redacted this article when he decided it was better to create a secret bureau here, in his old building, so that the new Vatican could mount campaigns that were kept hidden from most of the administration in Rome. Campaigns against witches and sorcerers as well as against magical creatures.
Jordan hoped his summons was related to his sighting of the Grande Sorcière in Oslo and that it would result in a mission against the High Coven. Those dark witches would have to be eradicated at some point if the Vatican was ever going to completely abolish the French Church. Plus, it was the kind of fight he would enjoy, both allowing him to use his growing knowledge of enchantments and pitting him against a human enemy who clearly merited death.
But no, Jordan reconsidered, it had to be something else, because his orders had arrived before he’d witnessed the Grande Sorcière sidestep the trap set by Orsini. More likely it would be another campaign against the Nephilim, all of whom Albornoz despised—Jordan had heard rumors that Goblins were causing trouble in the Alps. He would just have to suppress his distaste for killing them.
Unless the Vatican had learned about his experimenting with enchantments. If that was the case, he was going to need Ty’s help to leave this building alive.
. . . . .
Cosimo de’ Migliorati had been happy as archbishop of Ravenna, a city northeast of Rome, where the pastries were as sweet and hard to resist as the women who brought them. But his happiness was shattered when Pope Boniface IX made him legate, head of a bureau in Venice he had never heard of. It turned out to be an austere department devoid of the niceties of his former life. In his new position, he was in constant fear for the well-being of his immortal soul and nightly prayed that he would live long enough to balance the scales in St. Peter’s eyes.
Today the legate was concerned about meeting Commander Jordan and had slipped off to his dressing room for a few moments of quiet contemplation. Gathering his robes up about his waist, he sat over the hole in the board, which in turn covered a larger hole in the stone windowsill. The normally foul odor emerging from this opening was made even worse by his new contribution to the basin built within the stone wall a short distance below. Here human waste collected, any surplus overflowing out a small opening into the canal, its natural decay producing ammonia vapors that rose up to help rid the clothing hanging around Legate de’ Migliorati of lice.
The legate wondered, as he often did when the warm fumes enveloped him, if he would not prefer the lice over the stench, which clung to his robes for hours after he left the dressing room each morning. His thoughts returned to Jordan, whom he had not met. The reports painted Jordan as a cunning, volatile, and dangerous man who had most likely betrayed and killed the leader of his previous mission. Just the kind of man whom the legate required. However, the legate worried that when Jordan received his new orders, he might also be the kind of man who would become angry enough to kill him on the spot.
The legate stood, straightened his robes, opened the door to his adjoining office, and strode in. Waiting for him were his personal secretary, Jordan, and the largest man the legate had ever seen, if indeed he was a man, which the legate realized he was not. He wondered how the massive creature had managed to get through the small door to his office.
“Commander, you have done well,” said the legate, walking to h
is desk. “By all accounts the undertaking in Norway was a success, despite the fact that the first commander was . . . well, ‘killed’ would be a polite word for it, and you were forced to take over.”
“Thank you, Your Grace.” Jordan gave a slight bow.
“Though you were instructed to seek out and destroy ungodly creatures, not bring one back as a pet. As our Lord drove the followers of Lucifer out of heaven, he has charged his True Church with driving their Nephilim offspring from the earthly abodes they have crept into. What is it anyway?”
“You’d be well served to call him Ty, not ‘it,’ Your Grace. Ty is bound to serve me. I rescued him from a witch of the High Coven.” Jordan delivered his prepared lie.
“A companion, how nice for you. Now, please ask . . . Ty . . . to wait outside so we can proceed with our business.”
“You’ll have to ask him yourself, Your Grace.”
The legate looked into Ty’s solid black, barren eyes and decided it was best to ignore the thing.
“As I said, you did well, showing exceptional leadership during great adversity. This office has need of a marshal of your skills and promotes you to the position. Let us hope you fare better than your namesake.”
Jordan showed no surprise at the offer. “What office is this, and under whose authority shall I act? What rights and income go with the position?”
“This office has no title or charter, and you shall act solely as I direct. Here you receive no rights and privileges and only that income I deem necessary to carry out your missions. However, once you have served faithfully for a period of time I see fit, you will be awarded the title of Grand Marshal of the Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of St. John of Jerusalem of Rhodes, along with the lands, livestock, and slaves appropriate to that position. On Rhodes, of course.”
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