Fallen Angels (50 page)

She thought of his touch on her body, his gentleness, his legs by hers, his smile, and she bent her head and rested her forehead on the sill of the aperture and thought she would cry. Toby was not here, she was alone with her enemies, and she no longer knew who was her friend. Yet, when he had loved her in the mountains, when he had stroked her and soothed her and filled her with a shudder of love, had he been lying? If that was a pretence, she told herself, then nothing was real.

'Come forward, Thammuz.'

She looked again. She was in the utter despair of love betrayed. He was joining her enemies, he was picking up from the white marble steps a folded garment of black and gold silk.

'You may wear the robe of a Fallen One, Thammuz.'

She felt a sudden angry scorn of the mummery. She wanted to laugh at them, to mock them, to scream derision at these fools who cloaked their evil in such tawdry trumpery.

Thammuz unfolded the robe, opened it, and pulled it over his head. The sleeves hung loose. He pulled the cowl over his head. The robe, that she wanted to find so derisory, looked magnificent on him.

The voice, that nagged her with its echoes, whispered again. 'You are one of us, Thammuz, but you must prove your worth.' The Gypsy stood unmoving. The voice spoke again, so low that Campion could scarce catch the words. 'You brought us the girl, Thammuz?'

'Yes, master.'

'Call me Lucifer.' The sibilance seemed to hang in the chamber that was like a tomb.

'Yes, Lucifer.'

Another voice spoke, a louder voice, a voice that had a note of mocking triumph in it. 'Why did you bring her, Thammuz?'

He replied with a similar triumph, with a laugh of confidence in his voice, and Campion almost cried out in fear as she heard him. 'I have brought her for you!'

'Fetch her!' The words echoed in the chamber.

Thammuz turned. Campion saw the glitter of his eyes deep under the black and gold cowl, and she went back in the room, back to the heavy table, knowing that she could not fight, could not resist, could only wait for the victory of reason and the end of Lazen. Panic beat inside her and she waited for the man who had loved and brought her here.

Until this moment she had thought that her life was so blessed, so charmed by love, that she could not be hurt. She had come to France for love, but she had come to Auxigny because she believed in that love. Now, suddenly, as she heard the inner doors of the shrine open, that belief seemed childish. She was in terror.

She gripped the seals of Lazen as if they could give her strength. She saw light flood the lobby, and then the robed man with the blue, glittering eyes came into the room.

Thammuz had come for her.

A scream sounded in the shrine.

The silver cowl of Lucifer tilted up. His voice was mild. 'He's a fine looking man.'

The scream came again and faded into sobbing. Valentine Larke smiled. 'She's putting up a fight!'

'Poor thing.' Marchenoir opened the box of scalpels and stroked one of the handles. His voice was mocking. 'Waiting for her dear brother!'

Lucifer's silver cowl turned towards the knives. 'How you do enjoy death, Moloch.'

'I got used to it quickly enough, didn't I?' Marchenoir said. 'It was common enough in this valley, except in the chateau, of course. We could die of hunger and there were fat dogs up here.'

Lucifer laughed his dry laugh. 'Your father, Moloch, was a duke. Belial's father was an earl. You both hate what gave you life.'

There was silence. The candles were bright on the polished black table.

The girl screamed again and Lucifer's cowl moved impatiently. 'What's keeping him?'

'A farewell rogering?' Marchenoir made his voice light. Somehow the mention of his and Larke's aristocratic fathers had been chilling. He lifted one of the knives. 'Skins like white silk, they have. They must bathe once a bloody month.'

'Once a day,' Lucifer said drily.

'In milk,' Larke added.

'Christ in his heaven!' Marchenoir laughed. 'That would stop you pissing in the bath.'

Their laughter was cut off by a new scream, by the sound of feet dragging on the great chamber's floor. Lucifer spoke softly. 'Progress, I do believe.'

They stood. They moved in a susurration of silk robes, each man going back to his small observation hole in the wooden doors. They waited for Thammuz to bring his sacrifice for their victory. Behind them, on the stone table, the candles shone on the gleaming steel of Marchenoir's blades. They waited.

—«»—«»—«»—

Skavadale dragged her through the inner doors, into the splendour of the candle-lit chamber that seemed so oddly empty as though the marble and porphyry and mosaics waited for a great tomb in the circular floor.

She fought him. She beat at him with fists, but his strength was huge and he half carried, half dragged her down the steps to the centre of the room.

He wrenched her about, facing her towards the far wall, and forced her hands up behind her back so she could not move.

She waited. She could hear her own breath as the loudest thing in the room. She sensed she was being watched.

'Thammuz?' The voice was a sinister whisper.

'Lucifer?' Skavadale's voice was strong in her ear. Her hair had half fallen about her face. The gypsy clothes had been tugged ragged on her. The ring of candles made their shadows spread and mingle about their feet.

The whisper sounded again. 'Tell her what you are, Thammuz.'

His voice was strong. 'I am
Illuminati
!'

'Tell her where her brother is, Thammuz.'

'In a common grave.'

'Tell her who betrayed him, Thammuz.'

'I did!'

She sobbed. His hand wrenched her arm higher.

The whispers seemed to mock her, to laugh at her, to echo about the cold marble of the big chamber.

'Who deceived her, Thammuz?'

'I did!' He shouted it, startling her, shouting it in a yell of victory, and the yell seemed to provoke a great crash that was like the world's ending, a ringing, clanging, grating, hammering clash that echoed in the marble walls like all the thunder of a season's storms poured into one room and one moment.

The candlelight went out with a crash, plunging the room into blackness, leaving only the tiny spots of light where the holes were drilled in the false marble.

She screamed.

The scream echoed and she fed it with another, filling the room with her fear, rivalling the noise of the great iron shutter that had fallen over the candles.

Instinctively, though they could see nothing from within their small chamber, the three robed men looked up. Marchenoir frowned. 'The chain must have broken.'

'Open the doors.' Lucifer's voice was crisp.

The scream still echoed as Marchenoir and Larke pulled back the doors, spilling a softer candlelight onto the sunken marble floor where the girl, who looked so pitifully pale and frail, stood in her captor's grip.

Campion gasped. She looked at the Fallen Ones; three robed men, two in black and gold, and one resplendent in silver. She could not see their faces that were hidden by the deep cowls. This was trumpery, she knew it, yet they were oddly impressive as, on silent feet, they came to the top of the marble steps.

The silver cowl tipped as Lucifer stared up at the shutter. She saw the glitter of his eyes, then he raised his right arm and gestured one of his companions forward.

The man seemed hugely bulky beneath his gaudy robe. He pulled back his cowl and Campion saw the face that gave Europe its bad dreams, the enemy of kings and courtiers, the heavy, savage, triumphant face of Bertrand Marchenoir. He walked down the white marble steps and his eyes, that had looked on so much death, were bright with the anticipation of this moment.

He stopped four paces from her. 'I am Moloch!'

She said nothing.

'I am your death.' He stared and felt his anger stir. The girl, even dishevelled and frightened, was more beautiful than he had dared hope. 'Daughter of Auxigny! You thought me an animal. You made me bow to you. You thought me dirt.' His face twisted in a spasm of hatred as he spat at her. The spittle flew past her head.

'I never knew you!'

'Knew me! I was the peasant! But you will know me, by Christ's blood you will know me!' His voice was rising in a passion of hate to fill the echoing chamber with his threat. 'Let us see you, girl! Let us see what you are!' He raised his arms and stepped towards her and he reached with his huge, strong hands for the neck of her clothes to rip them in rage from her body that he knew would be like white silk and on which he would spill his awful revenge until he panted and was slaked. 'Now,' whispered Christopher Skavadale.

—«»—«»—«»—

'Scream!' he had said as soon as he appeared in the small room. 'For Christ's sake, scream!'

She stared at him in horror.

He seemed to ignore her. Instead he went to the table, stooped, and felt beneath it. 'Scream!'

'Scream?'

'Scream!'

She screamed.

'Louder, for Christ's sake!'

She screamed as though she wanted to wake the dead.

He groped under the table and brought from the hooks that were screwed there his two pistols. He had hung them by their trigger guards when he had undressed, praying that Toby had remembered to put the hooks in their place. 'Turn around.'

She frowned.

He hissed at her. 'Hurry, woman! Turn! Scream!'

She turned and she felt his hands tugging her blouse from her skirts and then the cold barrels of the pistols were next to her skin, were being rammed inside her waistband, and he was pulling the blouse down to hide them. Her throat hurt from the screaming. 'Where's Toby?'

'If he killed Dagon, he's downstairs. Scream!'

She screamed. He turned her round, looked at her with a look of pure joy on his face, that same look that she had seen in the autumn woods behind Lazen when he had killed for her, and he smiled. 'Listen!'

—«»—«»—«»—

He had told her exactly what they would do. As the light went out in the great crash he had tugged the pistols from her belt. He pushed one pistol into her right hand and she felt his fingers warm on her skin as he pulled back the flint.

His voice whispered in her ear as the doors were pulled back. 'Courage. Keep your eyes open as I taught you.'

He had taught her by taking her to the guillotine. There were times when horror had to be faced.

The three men faced her.

Skavadale's voice was softer than wind on fur. 'I love you.'

She almost smiled. This was why she loved him, not because he was a difficult man to be tamed, but because he thought her worthy to walk the lonely paths with him. She saw it at that moment, as clear as the sun reflected from Lazen's lake, that love had bound them, that it was not she who gave a gift by stooping from her rank to marry him, but that he, from his competence, loved her. She was filled with love for him, she sensed the happiness that waited for them, because she too thought him worthy. All that she wanted, all that she dreamed of in her life, this man would help make possible. He trusted her. Love, as nothing else can, filled her and made the difficult possible.

Then the silver-gloved hand gestured the big man forward, and she saw the face revealed, knew it was Marchenoir, and the brutish, smiling, gloating man came towards her and she listened to his ravings and her fingers gripped the pistol which felt slippery in her palm. He stepped forward, his hands rising to tear the clothes from her.

'Now,' whispered Christopher Skavadale.

Skavadale moved away from her, moving to the left, and she brought the pistol round in her right hand and she saw the eyes of the big man glance down and she hurried, stepping back, pushing the pistol forward and his hand seemed to strike down as his mouth opened in a snarl.

She pulled the trigger.

It was harder than she could have believed.

She had fired many guns, but the pistol trigger seemed to resist like a stuck key, his hand was coming down to knock the gun away and she jerked her finger, trying to remember what Christopher Skavadale had told her, and then it seemed as if a mule had kicked her.

The noise exploded in the room.

The gun jerked back, her wrist flaming with pain. She was half dazzled by the fire, stunned by the noise and the kick of the gun, and she kept her eyes open as he had told her, stepped back, and she saw the Frenchman stumble. He pawed at her with his right hand, bellowed like a clumsily gelded calf and fell onto his left knee. His hands clasped his hip as blood welled between his fingers.

She stepped further back. Her ears rang with the echo of the shot, Christopher Skavadale was walking forward, his pistol pointing at Belial and Lucifer who stared at the sudden blood and hazing smoke.

Marchenoir was on his knees, shouting in pain, his blood staining the floor. Skavadale had told her to bring the pistol up beneath his chin and blow his head off, but he had been too quick for her, the trigger too stiff. He was helpless, though, his hip shattered. He looked up at her, anger and astonishment mingled on his face, then Lucifer moved.

He took one step, just one, and he had placed himself behind Valentine Larke.

There was one bullet in Skavadale's pistol, a bullet that, if he fired, must hit Larke. Lucifer smiled. 'Who are you, Gitan?'

'Your enemy.'

'Then you are a fool. You will die a fool's death.'

There was a sound in the passage behind the shrine, a scraping sound like a beast dragging itself on stone. Campion saw a shadow there, a shadow within a shadow that seemed monstrous in the darkness, and in the shadow's hand was a great, brass-mouthed gun and Lucifer, turning to the shadow, laughed. 'Had you forgotten Dagon, fool?'

Skavadale fired.

The bullet entered the shadowed cowl, struck it back, spraying blood high in the air to spatter the marble wall of the chamber, and Valentine Larke, his forehead holed by the ball, fell back into the silver robes of Lucifer.

'Dagon!' The silver-robed man screamed at the deaf mute and raised his arm to point at Skavadale and Campion. 'Dagon!'