The Fallen

by Tarn Richardson

  “Not like this.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “These were powerful, from one of the lower levels of hell. There were nine of them.”

  “Nine possessions?” he pondered. Isabella cursed, but Tacit kept his drunken eyes on Kell. “In one place?”

  Kell nodded. “Entire dormitory possessed. They fought hard, trapped us for days within the place.”

  “Which college?”

  “Vittoria Colonna.”

  Tacit nodded. He’d visited the place several times to deal with possessions in the past, but nine in one place was new even to him. “What did they have to say for themselves?”

  “What do you mean?” exclaimed Sandrine, mocking the comment. “This wasn’t a social visit! They were demons! Not Priests!”

  But Kell came forward and calmed her with a hand on her shoulder. “It’s all right, Sandrine, I know what Tacit means. Demons, they cannot resist mockery and arrogance, trying to prove their mastery and might over anyone who might listen, especially anyone who comes to attempt to defeat them.”

  “And were they forthcoming?” Tacit asked, sitting back on the lid of the crate and folding his arms, the bottle nestled within them.

  Kell nodded. “They were. They confirmed that something is coming.”

  “The Antichrist?” asked Isabella urgently, looking at Tacit and then back to the Inquisitor. Kell considered the comment for a while.

  “Perhaps, but they referred to whoever was coming as their ‘lieutenant’. Whoever that might be?”

  “A person?” Henry suggested.

  “Maybe. Whoever they are, whatever they are, apparently they are waiting, waiting for the right moment to arrive.”

  Accosi dragged a gloved hand through his hair. “Resurrection. They kept talking about ‘resurrection’ and ‘a chamber of bones’.”

  “Does that mean anything to you?” Henry asked Tacit. Tacit made a face and took another mouthful of brandy, hoping that after it things might begin to make a little more sense. Everything at the moment seemed a confused blur. In fact, everything had been confused ever since he had broken out of Toulouse.

  Inquisitor Santoro, who had said nothing but had drunk heavily from a tankard of ale, spoke for the first time. “Baptised in blood.”

  “I wonder what’s meant by that?” asked Tacit, feeling drunk and relishing the sensation.

  “It was what one of the demons I exorcised said. Admitted it right at the end of the third day, before I finally hounded the evil from the child it had possessed. That is how he described the lands where this lieutenant would return. Baptised with blood.”

  “The war?” suggested Isabella.

  “They have a war,” Tacit nodded. “A war across most countries in Europe, on many fronts. But baptised with blood? It sounds like some sort of ritual.”

  “A ritual to create a chamber of bones?” suggested Isabella.

  “Perhaps they are gathering an army,” said Henry, “baptising them with blood to get them to fight.”

  “Well, they already have an army,” answered Tacit, scowling. “Six of them in fact. Six nations committing crimes across all of Europe. Perhaps this baptism is something to do with the letting of blood upon the ground?”

  “Demons,” growled Sandrine. “Can we trust them?”

  “No,” said all five Inquisitors at once.

  “No,” repeated Tacit, “they cannot be trusted, but from out of their lies, truths do come out.”

  “And names,” said Kell.

  “Sister Malpighi?” asked Tacit, dropping the brandy bottle from his lips.

  “How did you know about her?”

  “You sent message of a word ahead of you. ‘Seer’.”

  Kell nodded. “That was the word we strangled from one of the demons. Over and over he said it, particularly as the end drew near, as if it was a taunt. Seer. Seer. Over and over. Immediately we too thought of Sister Malpighi. The Seer of secrets.”

  “It’s a start,” nodded Tacit. “Let’s go.” He drained the remains of the brandy from the bottle and stood, Henry catching hold of his elbow as he pushed past.

  “Tacit, the Inquisition, they’ll be watching for you everywhere. You know that, don’t you? They’ll be waiting for you. They won’t let you get away next time.”

  “Let them try,” Tacit replied, a drunken leer coming to his face. “If what we’ve heard is true, that something is coming, some evil, this is not the time to be skulking in the shadows. It’s time to step into the light and face it. And destroy it, if we can.”

  FIFTY EIGHT

  THE VATICAN. VATICAN CITY.

  Bishop Basquez stood with his hands flat to the sill of the arched stone window, staring out over St Peter’s Square, watching as the crows flocked across the terracotta and beige rooftops in their thousands. Something had drawn them to the city. Something was festering within the holy city. Something foul had been awoken.

  The young Bishop sighed loudly and looked across to his desk and the file lying upon it. The final manuscript of Salamanca’s ill-fated attempt to unlock the darkness that many believed drove Tacit, at least until Salamanca was parted from his tongue and with it his mind. Basquez knew something lay buried within the Inquisitor. They all did, all those involved with his capture, his incarceration and his torture. That’s why they had asked Salamanca to record every subtle revelation, every clue released through the agony of torture to help reveal what power it was that lay within Tacit, waiting to be unlocked.

  What had started as rumour and suspicion, supported only by the speculation of prophecy, had grown into something manifest, something real before their eyes. A world in flames. The Antichrist’s return. The theft of the dagger of Gath from its secure keeping in Paris.

  Thirty-eight years ago, the dagger with its twin had been used to attempt to forge a crossing between the two worlds and bring damnation to the earth. Those who had witnessed the event claimed to have heard the High Priest at the time announce that something had come through.

  Now, after all that had been seen and heard, Bishop Basquez was not alone in believing that what had come through was in fact Poldek Tacit.

  They had only to unlock the secrets within the man in order to be able to step closer to the Abyss, to peer into its fiery depths and witness firsthand its terror and power.

  But the man, the subject of their experiments, the one born out of the satanic ritual and sulphur, had escaped and now Grand Inquisitor Düül had involved himself personally. This would not end well. Basquez knew it would almost certainly end with Tacit’s demise and with it the secrets and the potential untapped power stored deep within him.

  FIFTY NINE

  ROME. ITALY.

  Tacit had wanted to take only Inquisitor Kell up to Sister Malpighi’s residence, leaving the others in the entrance below, safe from any dangers they might encounter there, but he’d lost the argument. Partly through the determined spirit of his party and partly due to the clumsiness of inebriation which had embraced him. He had relented, leaving just the three Inquisitors behind to fend off the enquiring Sisters in the main hall.

  They stood in the dark of the convent corridor, Tacit beside Kell, the rest of the party behind him, shoulders almost touching, not talking, their breath barely audible in the quiet of the place. There was a smell of polish and teak oil in the still air, incense too, but above it all was the putrescence of rot, seeping like a creeping thing from the closed room beyond. Flies bothered about their faces. Tacit knew exactly what had made them so active.

  “Perhaps we weren’t the only ones told about Sister Malpighi?” he muttered, fumbling in a pocket for another drink to help face the nightmare he knew lay beyond.

  Sandrine scowled, puckering up her nose. “Surely no one would murder here?” she replied. “Not here, in a monastery?”

  “Sister Maltese said Malpighi had a visitor, two days ago,” Kell revealed, his voice shallow. “Apparently he had come from the Vatican.”

  “
Who had come?” asked Tacit.

  “A Priest. Sister Maltese said she didn’t know him. But he was a big man. Muscular.”

  “An Inquisitor,” nodded Tacit, and he instantly knew to which organisation he belonged. The Darkest Hand.

  “Whoever it was, it obviously wasn’t someone she was expecting,” said Henry.

  “Don’t forget this is Sister Mapighi we’re talking about,” replied Tacit. “She must have known they were coming for her.”

  Henry removed his revolver from its holster and snapped the cylinder open, studying the brass rounds inside. Against the metal barrel they sparkled like coins of gold. Sandrine peered at him from the corner of her eye, an eyebrow raised.

  “Think you’ll be needing that thing?”

  “Nowhere seems safe anymore,” replied Henry.

  Sandrine raised the back of her hand gently to Henry’s and their fingers intertwined.

  “You all right back there?” asked Tacit, an indignant look on his face. “You can always go back down to the lobby, wait with the Inquisitors for us.”

  “No,” said Henry firmly, pulling his hand away and snapping the cylinder of the revolver shut. He thrust it back in his holster and prepared himself for action, clearing his throat and rolling his shoulders loose. There were tears in his eyes, anger in his face at how fate had catapulted him into this seemingly doomed world. “Shall we go in?” he asked.

  “Good idea,” replied Tacit and he raised his boot, kicking the door open off its hinges. A fetid wave washed over them; it was a stench so bad that even the horrors Sandrine had seen and smelt in the lairs beneath the killing fields of the western front paled into insignificance compared to this reek of almost indescribable abhorrence.

  “Oh my God!” cried Isabella, her hand tight to her nose and mouth. The smell flooded the corridor, engulfing them in its stink, a depraved malingering thing that seemed to embalm them in its putrescence. “The smell!”

  “Do you think that’s –”

  “Sister Malpighi?” answered Tacit. “Who else could it be?” Tacit peered into the darkness of the little residential chamber. Blackness entombed everything. There was a malevolence to the place, something everyone could feel, something ungodly which had settled within the room. It prickled skin, raised hairs on backs of hands and necks. Sandrine’s hand dropped to the nape of her neck.

  “Something came to this place,” she said coldly. “Some evil.” There was a pressure in her chest and she was aware she was shaking. Henry reached out and took her hand to steady her.

  “Kell,” muttered Tacit, “come with me. The rest of you, stay where you are.” In the fetid darkness, the two Inquisitors stepped over the threshold and waited for their eyes to adjust.

  The soft hue of moonlight seeped through the thin blind of the window at the far end of the room. But there was something else as well as the stench, thick, like a soup, the repugnant reek of rot. A chill, an ungodly cold.

  Flies buzzed excitedly around them. At first Tacit couldn’t see the source of the appalling smell, but as he looked up he recognised the shape of a decomposing figure hanging from the rafters of the room. Haloed silver from moonlight, the body hung in the middle of the chamber, suspended in the air as if floating, like an angel hovering within the room.

  He swallowed and scowled, his eyes never leaving the body, barely recognisable as the Sister. He stared directly into the bored out sockets of the victim’s eyes and felt something shift inside him, revulsion and something resembling sorrow. From the look on her face, the eyes had been burnt clean out of her skull, eyeballs, eyelids, optic nerve, everything, all the way down to the socket bone behind. This was not the work of men.

  Kell, hands wrapped about himself like an embrace, noticed that even the silence seemed to have grown into an almost overwhelming presence in the room. He looked aside, snatching a brief breath, before lifting his eyes to look at Tacit.

  Tacit, however, did not look back at him. His focus was solely on the naked figure in front of him.

  Hanging upside down, the woman’s arms and legs were tied tightly to the walls and rafters by what looked like ropes. On closer inspection Tacit saw that the Sister had been strung up by her own entrails, each limb wrapped in such a way that it tensed white against the strain of her own organs. At her belly was a wide and deep cut, her drying bloodied innards, crimson and blue, slumping down over her withered breasts to the bony line of her chin. Holes had been drilled into her wrists and ankles through which entrails had been threaded and pulled. Tacit had witnessed crucifixions before, when he was younger, but never anything like this, never a victim crucified by their own intestines. No human heart could ever conceive such a horrific desecration.

  He turned towards the side of the room, as if intuition called him that way. A chill seemed to emanate from nearby and he could see vomit on the floor. Something caught his attention in the far corner of the room: three coins, piled on top of each other. He stepped over the pools of sick and reached down to pick the money up. Round golden Austro-Hungarian Krone coins.

  “What have you got there?” asked Kell.

  “A payment for the Ferryman in the east,” he said, weighing the coins in the palm of his closed hand.

  SIXTY

  ROME. ITALY.

  The first suggestion of amber dawn light was feeling its way through the city. One of the three dark-gowned Priests coughed to clear his throat and announce their arrival but there had been no need to do so. In the quiet of the capital at that hour of the morning, Georgi had heard the men’s footsteps from the moment they had stepped onto the Trevi Fountain’s long flagstone approach.

  “The first ritual is complete.” Georgi said, brushing the surface of the water with his fingers. “Did you not feel the change? Did you not sense the gathering powers? Now the second of the three can be performed.”

  “What did you do?” asked the Priest, playing awkwardly with his hands at the front of his robe, the other two standing silent either side of him, their heads bowed as if in awe of the man.

  “Why do you ask?”

  “We have been sent to ask.”

  “I see. Does our master in the Holy See wish to know all the sordid little details?”

  The lead Inquisitor nodded and Georgi smiled, producing a small soft brown pouch marked with patches of discoloured fabric, tossing it to the member of the Darkest Hand. “I took her eyes, among other things.”

  “What am I supposed to do with these?” asked the Priest, holding the damp mottled bag away from him by the tie.

  “Whatever you wish. Their value has been spent. They can give no more.”

  Georgi smiled and looked up into the tall heights of the Vatican, seeing the dawn brighten behind it.

  “They are concerned,” the Priest to his left said, following Georgi’s eye to St Peter’s Basilica.

  “What have they to be concerned about?” Georgi asked. “All is going according to plan. The war in the Carso proceeds as hoped. Word has returned that they have found the one who will be sacrificed, as was foreseen.”

  “Tacit,” the leading Priest spoke.

  “What about him?”

  “We hear that he was seen in the Vatican. In Benigni’s office. That Inquisitors cornered him. That they fought.”

  Georgi laughed and nodded. “Something to warm Tacit up after his long incarceration, no doubt?”

  “Our master doesn’t see the funny side of it,” the Priest said, his face grave. “We need to be careful, especially now we know Tacit is back and the Sodalitium Pianum are sniffing around.”

  “The Sodalitium Pianum are finished,” Georgi replied, striking with a voice like iron. He turned back to the Trevi Fountain and once more absently brushed the surface of the water, watching the long ripples with something approaching wonder in his eyes. “Benigni is dead. With him gone, the Sodalitium Pianum will collapse.”

  “And the file he was gathering on you? On us and our plans?”

  “Removed.”

>   The Priest nodded, relieved to hear this.

  “But what of Tacit?” he asked.

  “What about him?”

  “Does it not worry you that he is back? He might ruin everything?”

  But Georgi shook his head. “Have you listened to nothing? Tacit cannot ruin anything, for he is bound up with everything. The prophecy. Without him, we cannot hope to achieve our vision. I promise you, I would be more concerned if Tacit was still rotting in that Inquisitional Prison.” Georgi cracked his knuckles and worked the tension from them. “He must be present, to play his part. Although I doubt he realises yet that he is central to the plan.”

  “It just wasn’t expected for Tacit to have been drawn to events quite so soon,” said the Priest. “The prophecy, of course, predicts his involvement. We were expecting him to eventually escape from Toulouse, but …”

  “Isabella. He loves her,” said Georgi, almost fancifully. He peered into the dark waters of the fountain, staring into its depths for a long time, before continuing to speak. “Even I was surprised by the speed by which he returned to the Vatican and found their safe house. He cares for her very much. I suspected he loved her, but I never realised to what extent.” And then he laughed and shook his head. “Love! What has love ever brought Poldek Tacit other than pain and anguish?” The laughter evaporated on his lips. “You would have thought he would have learnt to control his emotions by now? But that was always his weakness.” Georgi looked back to the surface of the water, his face pink from his outburst.

  “Grand Inquisitor Düül,” the lead Priest said, at length.

  “What about him?”

  “He has taken personal control of the situation. He is using dogs to track Tacit and those he has fallen in with, enemies against us. They have tracked them to Trastevere Monastery.”

  Georgi pondered the news carefully. “Nothing can be done. And nor should it. Our hand must not be revealed, not yet.”

  “But what of Tacit, of his safety?”

  “Like I said, Tacit is tied up within the prophecy. It was destined to be that he found this path and walks upon it. He will not come to any harm, not until his part is played. But this soldier, the half-wolf, and these other Inquisitors who have joined with them, they are of no consequence. We need to tighten the cordon around the prophecy and remove anyone unnecessary. We cannot risk anything interfering with its true course.