‘Excuse me, dear, but are you a visitor?’ A ward nurse had appeared out of nowhere. ‘These children need rest and if you’re not visiting you should leave.’ She spoke with a weary firmness, not harsh, but certain.
Billi pointed at a door and headed to it. ‘I’m here to see -’ she got closer and noticed a sign, REBECCA WILLIAMSON – ‘my friend, Becky. Just for a minute.’ And she went in.
The lights were off and the curtains drawn, but there was enough illumination from the pallid glow of the monitors to see a girl asleep in the bed. She was small, seven or eight, with a drip in her arm, a pulse sensor tapped to her finger and a breathing tube threaded through her nose. Her hair was thin and Billi could see her skull, the skin thin and lined with blue veins. Billi would wait here a minute then sneak out and find Kay.
The girl opened her eyes. When she breathed it sounded like she was trying to suck air in against the will of her body.
‘Hello,’ said the girl. Her voice was fragile and weak.
Billi wanted to leave, but she looked into the girl’s eyes and saw the life burning fiercely within. The girl wanted to do something other than just wait in the dark.
‘Hi… Rebecca.’
Rebecca let out a long breath, then with great effort sucked in a new lungful. Her skinny body trembled under the sheets.
‘Are my mum and dad here?’
‘No, I’m sure they won’t be long, though.’
The girl started crying. Her head jerked slightly and her tears bubbled then trickled down. There was hardly any sobbing, just a short feeble panting sound. Billi looked around the room and found a box of tissues. She passed Rebecca a handful. She watched as the girl limply lifted them and the effort to wipe her face exhausted her. The damp tissues floated to the floor.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Rebecca. ‘I’m afraid.’
Billi didn’t know what to say. Comforting the sick was work for Hospitallers, not Templars. She just stared at the way Rebecca’s skeletal chest rose and sank. She could see the ribs beneath the white nightdress.
Rebecca turned to face her. Her focus settled on the silver crucifix round Billi’s neck. ‘Do you believe in God?’
Did she? Billi touched the cross out of habit. She’d spent half her life praying to Allah, the other half to Jesus. She’d asked her dad early on how she should pray. Arthur’s answer, for a Templar Master, had been a heretical one. He didn’t know, and thought God, whoever He was, probably didn’t care.
‘I… suppose.’
‘Why?’
Billi looked at the dying child, at how her brittle fingers gripped the sheets. ‘I guess… there has to be a reason why the world’s the way it is. A reason why -’ she listened to the terrible sucking noise as Rebecca fought on – ‘a reason why bad things happen.’
Rebecca closed her eyes. ‘My mummy never used to pray -’ her breathing setting into the shallowest, quietest ripple – ‘but she does now, all the time.’
‘Billi?’ Kay’s head appeared round the door. ‘I’ve been looking everywhere -’ He looked at Rebecca, eyes widening. He came in and grabbed Billi’s arm.
‘Leave. Now.’
‘What is it?’
‘We’ve got to tell Arthur,’ said Kay. He was already backing away, dragging Billi with him. He was terrified. His eyes darted into the corners of the room, into the shadows.
Billi tugged her arm free. ‘Stop freaking. What is it?’
Kay looked like he was going to run. Instead he took Billi by the shoulders and turned her round, facing the sick girl. He stood behind her and covered her eyes with his hands. Billi felt their coldness on her eyelids.
‘What are you do-’
‘Look.’ He separated his fingers, letting the sight slowly filter in. Billi blinked as the cobwebs of reality gently tore apart.
The lonely child sat shrivelled in her bed wrapped in shroud-white sheets and gazed at her with maggot-filled eye sockets. Things wriggled under her tissue-thin skin. Grotesque skeletal flies sat feeding off dripping, oozing flesh, and rank odours and putrescent vapours wheezed out of the girl’s lungs. The child breathed through an opened mouth lined with yellow teeth loosely bound to decayed, blackened gums, and her slime-coated tongue hung limp over her white lips.
‘No,’ Billi whispered, backing away from Kay, shaking her head free of the hideous image. She stumbled out of the corridor, fighting down the bitter, metallic bile climbing up her throat. Kay caught up with her and pulled them both through the doorway into the stairwell. Billi leaned against the wall, teeth clamped together, and waited for the nausea to pass.
‘What is it? What’s happening to her?’ She’d never seen anything like it. She couldn’t remember anything like this in any of the old manuscripts, the old Templar diaries. Kay squeezed her, his chest touched her back.
‘I don’t know.’ He turned back towards the door. ‘But I think this is only the beginning.’
Billi called her dad while Kay got the teas. They’d found a greasy spoon cafe off the high street, empty but for some old guy with a beard stirring his coffee endlessly and muttering at a blank spot on the wall. Faded posters of Caribbean beaches and white Alpine mountains decorated the walls, corners curled and ochre from cigarette smoke. She couldn’t get through; the phone went straight to messaging. She’d finally got Percy. He’d told them to sit tight; he was on his way.
When she went back in Kay had the teas and a bun waiting. He clutched the mug tightly, but his fingers still trembled.
‘You OK?’
He smiled weakly. ‘Been better.’
‘What’s happening to her?’
‘It’s a sickness, a disease, attacking her through the Ethereal Realm. Those… flies are slowly eating her soul. I could see her aura, but it was barely there. Once they’ve done it the body will just die.’
‘Can’t you do anything?’ she asked. Her stomach twisted at the memories of those flies. Kay didn’t even look up.
So the little girl was going to die, and there was nothing they could do about it. Billi thought about her, just lying there blankly gazing at the ceiling. That was how it was going to be, a small, pointless death and her last memory, the one she took with her to the grave, was going to be of a light bulb in the ceiling. Maybe Arthur would know a way to save her. Hold on, hadn’t she read somewhere that people could live, even without their souls?
Kay’s eyebrows arched, sensing her thoughts. ‘Without her soul it’s better that she dies, Billi.’
She tried not to think about the little boy from her Ordeal, Alex Weeks.
Kay leaned across and tilted her chin up gently so that she had to look at him. ‘Billi, without a soul we lose that one part of us that’s divine, the Breath of God. The path of the soulless leads only to damnation. Only the vilest, most evil person would consider it.’
‘Or the most desperate.’ Billi couldn’t get Rebecca out of her mind.
‘Without a soul, a void is left that creates a terrible, endless hunger. One they’ll try desperately to fill…’
‘With blood,’ Billi finished for him.
Kay nodded. ‘The taste of a person’s soul lingers in their lifeblood, in their flesh. The Hungry Dead feed on that. It sustains them for a while, but the taste is never enough. Then they kill again. And again. Each time, the soul they briefly sup on becomes less and less sustaining. The worst are reduced to eating corpses.’
Vampires. Nosferatu. Lamia. All cultures had their own name for them, the Hungry Dead. The Templars used the old Arabic word.
‘Ghuls,’ said Billi. ‘You think Rebecca will become one of the Hungry Dead?’
Kay shook his head. ‘I don’t think so, you need to choose to surrender your soul to become a ghul, that’s clearly not what Rebecca’s doing.’ He frowned, mockingly. ‘But don’t you pay any attention to Occult Lore? Balin must be pretty disappointed.’
‘You must offer your soul, willingly, to someone capable of consuming it, an Ethereal. It’s usually a devil, and it then
passes some of its own essence into the now soulless body. It’s not an easy transfer. It takes a lot out of the Ethereal. Even a single trade can weaken one for years. That’s why these sorts of deals aren’t that common. Otherwise devils would be creating ghuls all over the place.’
‘So you sell your soul. For what?’
‘For wealth. Power. Immortality.’ Kay stared out of the window. ‘Nothing important.’
Billi looked at his reflection, half lost in the darkness beyond.
‘How can you stand it?’ she said. ‘To see such things?’ She’d been shaken badly, but Billi knew even the horror she’d witnessed was a faded and weak image of what was really happening to the girl. Kay would have seen it ten times more clearly. If that was what his gift gave him she was thankful she wasn’t an Oracle.
‘You have to take the good with the bad.’ He smiled, but the smile was drawn and desperate.
‘Meaning?’
Kay sat, looking at his mug. The brown liquid gently quivered in unison with his own shaking hands. He let out a slow, cooling breath and the tea settled and was still.
‘You don’t know…’ He looked up at her, as if he was going to say something, then dropped his head again. ‘Not everything I see is ugly.’
‘What else?’
Kay stretched out his arms, his fingertips spread as far as they would go. ‘Amazing sights, Billi.’ He smiled at something and Billi couldn’t believe it was Kay. The smile was so sincere, so full, she felt almost ashamed she’d seen it. It was too personal. Someone’s secret smile. ‘Sometimes, Billi, sometimes we shine so very bright.’ He folded his arms back around himself. ‘It sort of restores your faith in things, y’know?’
‘Kay, you are très strange.’
‘But in a good way, right?’
Billi laughed. Maybe some of the old Kay was still there after all. She looked into his blue eyes and was caught by the deepness of their colour. She fell silent, her laugh snatched away.
Billi’s mobile rang. Saved by the bell. She pulled her gaze away from Kay. She didn’t recognize the number.
‘Hello?’
‘Billi? It’s me, Mike.’
Mike, she couldn’t believe it. Nothing all week and he calls now?
She looked awkwardly at Kay. ‘It’s… not a great time, Mike.’ Any second Percy was going to come barging in, probably with half the Order in tow too. Kay hadn’t taken his eyes off her so she gave him a half frown and walked away from the table.
‘You busy?’ Mike asked. ‘Just thought we might have that tea. There’s a great cafe round the corner from you. Interested?’
Billi hesitated. After what she’d seen at the hospital she knew things were going to hot up back at the Templar preceptory. She needed to keep her nights free. Then she thought back to how her dad had treated Mike – had treated her even – and made a sudden decision.
‘Yeah, I’d love to.’
They made plans to meet tomorrow evening, not far from the Temple. Billi snapped her mobile shut and waited for her heart rate to slow down.
She’d made a date. It had been easy.
Then why was she feeling so flustered? She put her mobile away and wondered if this wasn’t the beginning of something new: something of her own outside of the Templars – beyond her dad’s control.
‘Who was that?’ asked Kay. He was just behind her. Not at the table like he should be.
‘Just a friend.’
‘Who?’
‘For God’s sake, Kay, you are not my keeper!’ As soon as she’d said it she wished she hadn’t. She saw the darkened look. She had no time to pander to his fragile ego. He’d left her by herself for a whole year and now he’d just have to deal with the fact that she had a new life.
‘You don’t need to pander to my anything,’ snapped Kay.
‘You prick.’ She couldn’t believe it. How dare he read her mind? And just when she was beginning to like him again. Well, she was an idiot.
Kay stood up, his palms open. ‘Look, I couldn’t help it. I can’t just turn it off and on like that. I didn’t mean anything by it.’
‘Get lost.’ She wrapped her scarf twice round her neck and crossed over to another table. She’d wait for Percy there.
When Percy collected them Billi made sure she got in the front seat next to Percy so she wouldn’t be near Kay or even have to look at him. She didn’t need to be psychic to feel his eyes boring into the back of her head, but she refused to budge even when he accidentally-on-purpose shoved the back of her seat.
God, he was so irritating! If he could steal into her mind at any time how could she trust him with anything? Or keep her feelings to herself?
Billi concentrated hard on trying not to think anything at all, and certainly not about Kay.
She heard him huff with frustration. Maybe her being angry helped block him out. Good. She could stay angry at him for a long, long time.
They pulled up in King’s Bench Walk and went to Chaplain’s House, where they told Percy and Balin everything they’d seen. Billi was surprised her dad wasn’t around, but didn’t comment. Kay remained with Father Balin, so Billi wandered home with Percy.
‘Where’s Dad?’ she asked as they reached her front door. Percy frowned and looked down his huge chest at her.
‘Can’t say, sweetie. But he’ll be back in the morning.’
‘What’s going on, Percy?’
He shrugged. ‘Don’t know for sure, but we’ll get to the bottom of it. Now you get some rest.’ He pushed the door open for her and left.
The hallway walls seemed close around her, trying to trap her. The ancient faces of the past Templars peered down, judging her, as she walked by. She hung up her coat beside the portrait of Jacques de Molay and glared at the Order’s last Grand Master. De Molay was seen by the Templars as a hero. A martyr. He’d been burned alive, willingly going to the fire, because he believed in the Order and refused to abandon the Templars. But Billi didn’t want to be a hero. And she certainly didn’t want to be a martyr. She wanted to be normal. She wanted to hang out in cinemas, go to clubs, go on dates…
She would see Mike tomorrow. The Templars had managed without her for the last nine centuries, they could manage without her for one night, at least. She turned her back on the old Grand Master.
The kitchen was empty but for a cold cup of tea Arthur had left. She opened the fridge, but there was just a packet of sausages and a pint of skimmed milk. Even now she couldn’t bring herself to eat pork. Maybe Gwaine was right: once a Muslim always a Muslim. So Billi poured herself a glass of milk, and went to bed.
10
‘Billi, wake up.’
Billi shuffled under her duvet. Was someone knocking at her door?
‘Wake up, sweetheart.’
She wiped her hair out of her face and found her clock.
4.15 a.m. She rubbed her eyes. Yes. 4.15 in the morning.
The knocking on her door became urgent.
‘Get up, you lazy squire. Immediately.’
‘Percy?’
The door opened and Percy switched on the light. Billi grimaced at the glaring brightness.
‘Ah, the princess awakes at last. Get dressed. Art wants you down at the church, like right now.’
‘What’s going on?’
‘Something important.’
They were all there. Arthur had sent word and they’d all come back that very night. He’d called a Council of War.
In the round of Temple Church stood nine chairs. High backed, engraved with ancient images of war and faith, they’d been arranged in a loose circle lit only by candlelight that flickered on the grim faces of the men that sat there. Thin ribbons of smoke spiralled from the candles into the lofty, dark ceiling. Beyond this circle was gloom.
Billi took her seat. Kay was beside her, his face impassive but eyes bloodshot; he obviously hadn’t slept. On her right side was the other squire, Bors, Gwaine’s nephew. He glanced at Billi, his eyes hooded and lips curled in slight disdain. A
t twenty he was the second biggest warrior in the Order. Next year he’d qualify as a knight and he clearly resented still being seated among the squires.
Arthur’s hands gripped the armrests. Behind his chair stood Father Balin, pale as a midnight ghost. He wasn’t part of the fighting order so did not have a seat. But as the Chaplain he had a right to be present, even at a Council of War. To Arthur’s right was Gwaine, as Seneschal he took the next most honoured position to the Master. On Arthur’s left was Percy, the Templar Marshall, the Master of Arms. Billi looked round the circle at the others.
Pelleas looked tired. His right hand was wrapped in a bandage and he struggled to keep straight in his chair. The werewolf hunt must have gone badly, no doubt she’d hear all about it soon enough. But that could not be why the Council had been called; they were used to dealing with werewolves. Beside Pelleas sat Gareth, small but with powerful shoulders. He nodded briefly at Billi. He seemed relaxed but his fingers nervously fiddled with a short length of black feather, fletching from his signature weapon, the bow.
Berrant sat opposite him, between Gwaine and Kay. The youngest of the knights, he polished his glasses on his sleeve before sliding then back on his straight narrow nose. He was the Order’s computer expert and hacker. He was also one of the deadliest duellists alive. His high cheekbones gave him a sunken, skeletal appearance in the shadowy light.
‘Where’s Elaine?’ asked Pelleas. Billi checked over her shoulder to the pews, where Elaine usually sat, but they were empty. Being Jewish she couldn’t be a member of the Order but given that Arthur had summoned them all, it was odd she was missing.
‘She’s busy,’ said Arthur. He looked towards Kay. ‘The Oracle has something to tell us.’
Not squire Kay any more. Oracle. Chairs creaked as the others all turned to Kay. Billi watched him steady himself before speaking. He was the same age as her, but his responsibilities were a hundredfold greater. The Templars were counting on him and this was his chance to prove his worth.
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