Devil’s Kiss

33

Five in the morning and the streets were packed. Dawn was less than an hour away. Billi had the Silver Sword wrapped in a sheet, tied across her back in what the squires called ‘ninja-style’. She had truly lost Kay now. There was only one place to go – one thing to do. She gazed up into the rain-filled sky and saw it above her, not far now.

Elysium Heights.

A woman sat on the edge of the kerb, rocking back and forth, slapping her head. Her face was frozen in a silent, endless scream, her eyes screwed tight, but void of tears.

She looked mad, with that dumb, repetitive rhythm. It was only when Billi passed in front of her that she understood.

Cradled in her lap, still dressed in a pair of Winnie-the-Pooh pyjamas, lay a pale, limp baby. Dead or alive, Billi didn’t know. She pushed herself back into the crowds, away.

Billi walked through the people, the abandoned cars, the screaming children and hysterical parents. Headlights illuminated the bedlam as thousands took to the streets. Horns beeped endlessly, ignored sirens wailed and the hundreds upon hundreds of despairing mothers and fathers cried, yelled and fought for some little help, some little hope.

The roads to St Paul ’s Cathedral were gridlocked. People climbed over the cars, abandoned in the middle of the road when they couldn’t get any closer, carrying semi-conscious children in their arms. The entrance was under siege, hundreds of people all crowded around and trying to clamber over hastily erected barricades, exhausted priests and policemen trying to hold them back. Above them the skies echoed with church bells and thunder.

Billi stared around, bewildered.

Michael’s masterpiece.

The gates into the building site lay crumpled in the mud. The van had been driven through them and was abandoned a dozen metres further, engine still running and its front driven into the side of a Portakabin.

The rain and wind attacked her with greater ferocity; the elements seemed determined to keep her from entering. The heavens roared with thunder, but above the screaming gales she heard cries and the clashing of steel.

She threw the wrapping off the Silver Sword and entered.

Billi’s heart pounded. The sprawling site, dominated by the immense black tower, was dark and full of cold, fathomless shadows, any one hiding a murderous angel. The huge diggers, the countless cabins and storage containers seemed to have no logical order, creating a maze. The mud squelched and sucked at her boots. Deep puddles had formed in the troughs caused by the tractors that sat empty across the site, forcing her to drag herself, foot by foot. She tightened her grip on the hilt as she turned a corner into a small opening.

Father Balin sat leaning against the wall. Rain dripped off his white hair and his chin was resting on his chest. His clothes were filthy with blood and mud. She knelt down beside him and touched the wide gash across his chest. The mace lay on his lap and his crucifix was dangling in his right hand.

He hadn’t been much of a fighter. She looked at the kind wrinkled face; his eyes were closed and a faint smile remained. It wasn’t tears running down her face – it was only rain. Only rain. She kissed his forehead and left.

The clouds above boiled and spat down lightning, momentarily filling the sky with shocking white. The rain came at her like a solid sheet of icy water, but ahead Billi could just make out figures moving through the half-assembled tower, encircling a band of men.

This was it, then. For nine hundred years the Templars had kept the darkness at bay. They had fought, they had died, and it had come down to this: a fight to save London ’s firstborn from Michael, fallen archangel of the Lord.

This was their last stand. Their last hour.

And their finest.

Gareth, atop a lorry, calmly notching his bow and launching arrow after arrow, black-fletched death unerringly seeking out hearts and necks and eyes among the bright and shining and howling angels.

Bors, wild and savage, using his pair of short swords like a butcher’s chopper, and Pelleas, almost submerged beneath white bodies and claw-like hands that fought back with tooth and red nail.

Gwaine stood bloody, battered and defiant to the last. His left arm dangled uselessly, ripped open to the bone, but he fought on, waving his axe in wide circles over his head.

And Arthur.

They said Arthur brought nightmares to the monsters, and now Billi saw how.

He stood on top of a large steel storage crate, the size of a double garage. His heavy jacket was torn and the steel mail beneath tattered. Blood ran from a dozen cuts across his arms, chest and legs, but his face was a mask of berserk fury, his lips torn into a snarl as he raised his sword and howled.

‘C’mon!’ he cried. About him lay the dead, and around him circled the living. Two Watchers, each armed with machetes, leapt a dozen metres across the air. The first didn’t even land, his torso sliced by Arthur’s sword in mid-air so each half tumbled either side into the blood-drenched mud beneath. The second faltered, stunned by Arthur’s savagery, and that hesitation cost her everything. Arthur swept his weapon across hers, knocking the machete away. The angel turned to flee, but Arthur grabbed her flowing golden hair and snapped her back. She didn’t even have time to scream as he drove his blade through her.

Still weak, having just entered the Material Realm after centuries of imprisonment, the Watchers didn’t yet have Michael’s supernatural ability to survive the blow of a mortal weapon. The knights were drawing a dreadful slaughter, but the Watchers had numbers on their side. They just needed to hold the Templars at bay for a short while longer. Dawn was coming and then all the firstborn infected by the plague would die.

Billi stood, frozen. The noise, the terror and the chaos of the battle was overwhelming. She didn’t know what to do. Should she help her dad, or protect Gareth? Or aid Bors? Each moment could be their last, could be her last, and panic and uncertainty gripped her.

Watchers scuttled like insects along the black steel beams and columns. There were dozens of them. The lightning erupted again, and silhouetted against the raging white was a lone figure, poised on the highest point of the skeletal frame of the tower.

Michael.

She knew. It was down to her. It had always been. She was a Templar, and in the end it was as simple as that. And if this was to be the Knights Templar’s last hour, so it would be hers too. She knew it and, finally, was not afraid.

You shall keep the company of martyrs.

Had this moment always been planned? Kay’s prophecy? A freak meeting on the train? Destiny?

No, simpler than that.

Billi raised her sword high and it blazed in the storm light. Supernatural energies coursed through her from the weapon as it trapped the sparks of lightning and blazed. The others turned towards the blinding light as Billi cried:

‘Deus vult!’

She ran now, straight for the goods lift. The other Templars saw her, and understood. They broke their way out of the attacking Watchers, converging on her. The dark angels sensed it too. They screamed and howled, leapt from steel girder to girder, but she was there. She threw herself into the steel cage as Arthur reached her. Their eyes met. Streaked with blood, he smiled. She stood up, steady despite the way the fragile steel cage trembled in the tempest. He didn’t speak – there was nothing to say – he merely nodded. Then Arthur stepped back and slammed the gate shut.

Billi twisted the red handle and the lift rattled and sprang upwards. She gazed down into the swirling muddy battlefield as the Templars formed a circle at the bottom of her lift scaffold. Around them, merging into the darkness, gathered dozens of Michael’s followers. Billi stared down until they were lost in the rain.