The corridor into which he had run was too narrow to swing the rifle so now he used it as a spear. He caught one man wielding a knife in front of him in the eye and he went down without a sound. The rifle wedged firmly in his socket and Tacit left it there, falling on the next guard and gouging with his thumbs. The tips squeezed through the man’s eyeballs and he continued thrusting with his great thumbs all the way in until he’d pushed through bone into something soft beyond, his thumbs buried up to his palms in the man’s head.
Tears poured from Tacit’s eyes, but these weren’t cold embittered tears. They were scolding tormented tears of wrath. He thought of Father Strettavario and the anger boiled within him. All his life he’d expected the killing blow to be delivered to him by the conniving guarded Priest, never upon the person he …
He hesitated, unable to compose his thoughts, to grasp just what it was he felt for Isabella, above the anger and violence and the incessant voice, now she was gone. Another who had touched his life cut mercilessly from it.
Gunfire from a heavier calibre rifle battered the wall next to him. He ran towards it with the man he’d gouged still in his hands, held up as a shield, throwing him to one side at the last moment and dashing the gun emplacement and the guards over with his bare bloodied hands. The door in front of him was locked. He ripped it from its hinges and threw it over his shoulder, tumbling breathlessly into the guardroom beyond. Eight men fell on him with truncheons and knives. Within six seconds, they lay still.
Tacit caught the scent of the air, coming down from the way ahead, his lungs filling with fresh oxygen, the first he had tasted for too long. It was like a tonic. At once his limbs felt re-energised and empowered, his strength renewed. There were stone stairs going up, broad and more ornate than anything he had passed so far. He took them at speed, curving up and around the outside wall of the jail block to a mezzanine platform above, from where it was possible to look down on the cells below. As he reached the top floor, his eyes fell on the head jailer, a pistol clutched tight in his white shaking fingers, whimpering and weeping as he tried to keep the weapon straight.
“I’ll shoot!” he warned, as Tacit strode towards him. “Damn it, I’ll shoot!”
Tacit snatched the pistol from him and drove it hard, barrel first, into the top of the jailer’s balding skull. It snapped through the man’s pallid scalp and sunk cylinder and trigger deep. The warden’s eyes rolled up into his head, and he fell backwards, grunting as his life passed out of him.
“I believe you,” Tacit retorted, pausing for a moment to catch his breath, his head bowed, his chest heaving. He’d not worked so hard in a long time, the agony of his lungs and limbs testament to that. His eyes turned to the far end of the mezzanine and the door. There were more guards coming, a lot more judging by the encroaching noise. To his left was a window. The light beyond was almost blinding. Tacit squinted and looked out over the French countryside, the city of Toulouse a dark smudge on the horizon.
Outside! Freedom.
He looked down at his bloodied hands, his anger swelling again, and drew his fingers into tight bleeding balls. The clamour from the guards was growing by the second. Isabella’s beauty came once again into his mind like a vision. He felt her, he smelt her, he heard her calling to him, telling him to go, to find those responsible for her death.
The window shattered as Tacit blasted through it. For a moment there was nothing, nothing but the sound of shattering glass and his heart beating hard in his ears. And then he began to fall, down to the tree line below. And as he fell, reaching out to the branches rushing up to meet him, he swore to himself that he would never stop, no matter how far the trail took him, until he found Strettavario and until Isabella’s death was avenged.
TWENTY FIVE
PLEVEN. BULGARIA.
The Inquisitor placed the silver crucifix pendant tenderly to his lips in a moment of quiet contemplation, before strapping a nail-studded knuckle-duster onto his right hand and pulling a grey-black revolver from his left holster. The cool summer sun had fallen beyond the western range of hills and either side of him, in the murk of the dusk, men readied themselves for battle. All eighteen of them were filthy and drawn, weeks tracking the enemy exacting its toll. There was a reek of sweat and alcohol in the air, the quiet mutter of prayers broken only by the occasional jagged bark from an intoxicated tongue searching for words to inspire and galvanise.
The Inquisitor looked across at the man next to him, sharing his fox-hole, and placed a heavy hand on his shoulders. “The unit’s spirit is up tonight, Inquisitor Kuhr, eh?” he said, his Nordic accent giving his words a generous warmth.
“After walking for so long, Bodil, what else do you expect?” Kuhr replied, his brown cape drawn over his head for warmth against the cold of the Bulgarian mountain tops. “We’re not dogs to be chained. We are fighting men.”
The young man nodded sagely. “Well, I think we’re about to be let loose.”
From somewhere along the line a low whistle was blown. The clawing trepidation Bodil had felt grow within him over the last few weeks, chasing the Slav enemy east towards the Black Sea, began to fix its hold upon him again. It wasn’t a fear of what he was about to face. Battle itself did not cause him to waver. After all, killing was all he knew. Instead it was a fear of failing which so terrified, failing before his faith and his fellow Inquisitors. If he fell in battle, he hoped he would not be one of the first.
In the clear moonlight Bodil’s eyes shone crystal blue, his cork-blackened face giving them an ethereal glow. He swallowed on the dryness of two days without sleep and fell silent again, the fingers of his right hand playing beneath the iron plate of the knuckleduster.
He looked up out of the shallow pit, sprinkled ash white with the sharp evening frost in that high inaccessible place, and watched the moon fall behind a cloud. In the valley from where they had come, ice-dusted firs shimmered in the silver moonlight. Every now and then something shuffled through them, cracking twigs and tumbling frost from the branches above. He closed his eyes and pressed the iron points of his weapon into his temple, muttering a silent prayer to his faith, reminding himself of his oath.
The low blow on the whistle sounded for a second time and the Inquisitors rose as one from their holes and went forward. Bodil had faced many battles over the four short years of service he had given to his faith, but he had never fought alongside others on a field of battle within an Inquisitional unit before. He was reminded of the words of his tutor who led them tonight and had drawn him to one side two days into the chase across Europe.
“Fight as if you are alone. Fight as if all the hordes of hell have been unleashed upon you. Fight to the last man and the last breath. Fight like the Inquisitor you are.”
He took a deep breath and felt something shift in his guts. The Inquisitors made no more effort to hide themselves on that high ridge, standing tall and silhouetted against the crimson moon like statues, malice and spite seared into their faces. The time to skulk in the shadows had passed. Below them the Slav camp was quiet, save for the occasional snort of a horse, the vague mutter of chatter around the fire. Every man in the line felt invulnerable and ordained for this moment.
“For the Catholic Church!” someone cried.
“For the Inquisition!”
“For our freedoms!”
The Inquisitors flooded forward down the hillside like a dark torrent unleashed from a dam, curses on their tongues. By the time the Slavs reached for their weapons, the Inquisitors were on them.
Bodil effortlessly dislocated the jaw of a man reaching for his rifle, tearing skin as he drove through with his jagged knuckles. Seconds later he put a round from his revolver into the chest of another gathering an axe from the fireside. The dull thuds of metal on bone battered the quiet of the night into submission, bodies staggering blindly from their blasted wounds. Almost at once, Bodil found himself in the very middle of the battle, flailing fists and arms all around. He smelt sweat and excretion, every sense
on fire. Like a drug it enlivened and drove him on. It reminded him of something. Fear. He uppercut a stumbling figure and stood down hard on the man’s neck as he fell, setting the revolver to his forehead. He recounted the words of his tutor as he pulled the trigger, a splattering of congealed matter landing at his feet.
Deafened by the cacophony of noise, he clawed his way about the heart of the battle, his eyes now blind to anything but the torrent of blood and falling bodies in front of him, feeling nothing but a carnal desire to inflict total damage upon the enemy. He lifted his revolver and fired twice, two bodies crumpling to the ground in front of him. A third figure leapt from a ledge on his right and Bodil brought him down with a sickening blow in the windpipe, battering him senseless with the back of his hand, the side of the Slav’s face breaking open under the savagery of the blows.
Broken and delirious with terror, the last remaining Slavs threw themselves to the floor, their hands held helplessly, hopelessly in front of faces as the final blows rained down upon them, pummelling all to bloody husks.
A cry went up from the heart of the carnage, a cry of celebration and rejoicing at the manner of the victory. Bloodied hands and rifle-butts were raised skywards, smoking firearms left to cool in holsters, as the last of the enemy were put down like dogs.
Laughter quickly joined the cries, bodies embracing, strong arms across backs. The Inquisitors’ work was done, their losses mercifully small. They could return to the Vatican victorious, their heads held aloft, receiving adulation and thanks from their masters. Their laughter turned to raucous cheers of merrymaking and foolish bravado. Compliments were shared and narcotics broken open. Their mission had been a long one, taking them across three countries, evading warring units from both sides of the world war conflict. Now, at last, their own little war had come to an end in an orgy of violence, short-lived and fierce.
But then, from the tree line in the distance, a single howl rose like a spectre into the night. At once the Inquisitors froze and looked east, for they knew the only thing the sound could mean.
A second howl caught the tail of the first, closer now. The Inquisitors staggered forward through the mud and bodies towards the dreadful sounds, struck dumb by the wicked taunt of the howls.
A third howl sounded, away to their left, and the Inquisitors turned as one, their hands back on their weapons, but all knowing they were useless against such an enemy. A fourth howl followed, this time from the ridge behind them, and they turned and cried out at the silhouette of the vast feral form standing astride the rocks. The great wolf-like beast, its hide knotted and fetid against the moon, raised its snout to the sky and howled again, a menacing dreadful cry which chilled the blood of all in the valley below.
“Silver!” came a roar from the ranks of Inquisitors. They had never expected this, to meet their mortal foe on such a mission. They had been assured Hombre Lobo did not reside here, cleared out, so they’d been told, a decade ago in the Great Eastern Purge. Celebrations turned to cold dread and alarm. They were unprepared and unarmed.
More howls came, closer still from the field beyond, the shapes of running creatures moving fast over the broken ground towards them, dashing through the shimmer of frost-blanched fields.
The call for silver came again, but the Inquisitors knew the demand was as useless as the weapons they raised to defend themselves, shambling forward to form a defensive square around the camp they had just taken.
Within fifteen broad strides the wolves had cleared the hundred yards of brush land and were upon the Inquisitors. The grey-black of the beasts fell on the men like a wave driving against a castle wall, fangs and claws dashing against chain mail and gauntlets. The line toppled and the wolves bound forward to snap and tear at those beyond.
“Sweet God!” cried a young Inquisitor, drenched in the blood of both his Slav enemy and his fallen comrades. “Werewolves!” before one of the beasts bit clean through his chest.
Bodil gathered a flaming brand and thrust it into the eye of a leaping wolf. The giant creature went down shrieking in a tone too sharp and terrible for one of its monstrous size. He backed away, his eyes wild, caught firm in terror’s grip. All about him wolves fed on his fallen comrades. His eyes fell on the body of Kuhr torn to bloody ribbons, like a butchered carcass at an abattoir.
He wept and thrust his torch aside, turning to run. This was no battle he could win. His only thought was to flee, to escape that savagery and hope to tell others of what he had seen, what he had witnessed. He ran, half stumbling, half falling over the bodies of the slain, slipping in the dirt and the blood, churned to a blackened paste which clung to boots and held him firm in that murderous earth. A wolf came out of the gloom from behind and dashed him hard across the earth, turning him over twice, so that he landed on his back, his ribs shattered, blood gushing into his lungs. He coughed painfully, torrents of crimson spouting from his mouth. As he sank down into the earth, the wolf climbed over him, its wide jaws bloodied and foul with the tattered remains of his comrades’ flesh, chain mail rings and torn cloth hanging between its teeth.
In that moment all his senses seemed to rally. He heard for the first time the sounds from the battlefield, the final cries of the Inquisitors as they fell, the sound of feasting, the cracking of bones, the tearing of flesh and mail, the pitiful moan from a dying throat as the last breath left it.
Pinned to the ground, Bodil’s fading eye caught movement over to his right and he managed to turn his head to stare at an approaching figure, walking upright on hind legs. It stopped a few feet away, and, with a vast taloned claw, pulled hard at its own neck. The fur and flesh peeled away and instantly the body seemed to wither and shrink. Almost at once, from where there had been an immense wolf, now stood the hunched figure of a man, dark greying hair closely cropped tight to his fleshless skull, dark sullen eyes like black pits, a look of disdain etched in his morbid skeletal features.
A passion grew once more in Bodil’s heart, his spirit renewed on seeing this wicked trickery. “Who are you?” he whimpered, blood frothing at his mouth, torn lungs, tears of pity and rage burning his eyes. He knew of the rumours, but had never before witnessed with his own eyes men who donned pelts to take on the form of werewolves.
“Who are you?” Bodil cried again, his voice now breaking with exhaustion and defeat.
“Gerard-Maurice Poré,” the dark-eyed man spat, a sneering malice catching in the corner of his mouth. “It’s a name you can take to hell!” And the wolf still pinning the Inquisitor to the ground tore his head from his body in a single bite.
TWENTY SIX
THE VATICAN. VATICAN CITY.
Monsignor Benigni descended the dark spiral staircase into the bowels of the Vatican, his hands clasped loosely together across his ample middle. He walked with his head bowed, his fat lips pursed, his perspiring fleshy face etched with thought.
He had come this way into the halls and vaults beneath the Vatican many times, always preferring the quiet and the isolation this route offered to the busier thoroughfares elsewhere in Vatican City, with their wide sweeping staircases and opulent marble corridors. In these lowly passages, where natural light never reached and the cold stone of the floor had been worn smooth with centuries of passing feet, there was little chance of meeting another coming the other way, less chance of questions being asked and private thoughts being interrupted.
There was a yawning black archway to the side of the spiral staircase, leading deeper still beneath the foundations of the Vatican. Only a select few, other than the librarians and scholars who worked within them, had ever gone beyond into those catacombs and silent halls, where the sum of all Catholic knowledge was assembled and stored.
The Vatican’s libraries.
Without hesitation he plunged into the black, drawn deeper by flickering torchlight at the far end of the sloping corridor. Benigni reached the end of the narrow constricting passageway and turned right at the junction, walking with his right hand brushing against the brick wall,
imagining the centuries of history scraping against his fingertips. The corridor descended, sloping down in a long arch, before arriving abruptly at a small room, book-lined and lit by lantern light, rows of narrow desks set out in uniform lines, studious Priests huddled behind each.
He ducked his head beneath the archway and slipped into another hall, its walls covered in papers and sheets of animal skin, maps of the world and strange illustrations from remote countries. He crossed the chamber, bowing to step through yet another archway. This time there was a flight of stairs leading immediately downwards from the exit, ready to catch the unwary, dropping into a tiny cell-like room that was empty save for a door in the opposite wall and a red-eyed, broad-skulled Priest sitting behind a tall narrow desk, his skin as white as alabaster.
“Monsignor Benigni,” he said, his face impassive, but with a light coming into his eye. “We have not seen you for many months. What brings you back to us?”
Benigni spoke without hesitation. “The three cardinal sins.”
The Priest paused, something resembling admiration playing at the corners on his mouth. “I see,” he said. A frown began to form on his face, a worried look, as if the resonance of what the thick-set man had asked for had begun to sink in. He pushed himself away from his desk, swivelling on his chair and padding slowly away from it. “You had better come with me,” he suggested, turning for a moment and watching the Monsignor follow him.
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