Sarwat Chadda: Devil’s Kiss

‘But I’m not a Templar.’

The Devil laughed. ‘Do you really believe you have any choice?’

Did she? She’d quit and yet here she was, doing her father’s will.

He would never let her be free. She had to free herself.

Billi reached for the sword.

‘No, not with that. You must find your own way to do this. Leave it here until it’s done.’

Billi went up the stairs.

She unlocked the door and entered the lounge. She’d thought they’d stay up, but Elaine was slouched on the sofa, snoring. The table lamp was on and a copy of a book, The Talisman, lay open on her lap. Billi crept past her and took a knife from the kitchen drawer. It was a narrow-bladed skinning knife, stiff and softly curved. It would slip between ribs easily.

An assassin’s weapon, that’s what Percy would have called it. He’d hated knives because they could be hidden in a smile. He’d said the assassins killed as they embraced their victims.

Billi entered the bedroom.

The curtains fluttered in the breeze; her dad never completely closed his window, not even when it was snowing outside. Just enough light slipped through the gap to see he was asleep. Lying on his back, the blankets lay half hanging off the bed, his upper torso covered in fresh white bandages. Old thin scars decorated his chest. He’d been fighting his entire life, first in the Royal Marines, and then as a Templar. He’d survived all those battles, all those midnight Ordeals with ghuls, werewolves, ghosts, demons.

The Unholy rightly feared him.

Moonlight caught the long sharp edge of her knife. Any chest wound deeper than seven centimetres was fatal; Billi had ten.

‘Jamila?’

She froze as he whispered her mum’s name. Did he miss her so much that even now, instead of seeing her, he saw first his dead wife? Was Billi always going to come a poor second to a ghost? He loved death, not her. Arthur’s head shifted as he rose and leaned against the wooden headboard and his face fell into a shaft of moonlight. His eyes were red-rimmed, still dilated from the morphine, but they came into focus. ‘Billi,’ he grunted. ‘I thought it was… never mind.’

Then he saw the knife.

His gaze stayed on the weapon, like he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Perhaps his brain just couldn’t register it.

Assassin.

The best assassins were loved by their victims, until it was too late. How else could you get close to your target unless they trusted you? Unless they loved you?

How else could you kill Arthur SanGreal?

One life against thousands. It was one life against hundreds of thousands. The Devil was right: if their positions were reversed Arthur wouldn’t hesitate.

Slowly he raised his gaze until those blue eyes of his met her black orbs. His cheeks creased ever so slightly and the wrinkles around his eyes bunched up. He smiled at her. ‘I understand,’ he said. He looked down at his chest, then turned his face towards the light through the window. And waited.

Billi stood beside the bed, her heart pounding so hard she could hear it. Sweat coated her back. She’d only walked a few steps, but her legs quivered with effort. Only her hand was steady. She closed her eyes. She thought about Rebecca Williamson, dying alone and afraid. Like her mother. Like he would, one day, let her die.

One life against all the firstborn.

Her dad’s life.

She slammed the knife forward.

The knife stood jammed in the headboard.

Arthur looked up at her. Tears lined his weather-beaten cheeks.

The door crashed open and the light came on. Billi blinked in the sudden brightness. Elaine stood bracing the doorframe. Her hair was as wild as a witch’s and she stared at them, then at the knife a few centimetres beside Arthur. Her mouth hung open, then clamped into a furious grimace. ‘Tell her, Arthur! Tell her!’ she hissed through her gritted yellow teeth. She then straightened her baggy pyjamas and slammed the door shut as she stormed off.

‘Oh God.’ Billi stepped away from the bed, her entire body trembling. She stared at the bright blade quivering in the wood. ‘What? What, Dad?’

Arthur straightened up. ‘I’m sorry, Billi. I’m sorry about all of this. I just wish there’d been another way. But you couldn’t know. It was Kay.’

Suddenly it seemed so hard to breathe. Arthur took a deep breath, then spoke. ‘Kay said this night would come.’ He took hold of her hand; it was the only way to stop it shaking. ‘He prophesised you would kill me.’

Billi shook her head wildly. ‘No, Kay doesn’t have that power. He said so himself.’ Telekinesis, telepathy, aura-reading, all the extra-sensory perceptions, but not this; he couldn’t see into the future.

‘She will sacrifice the one she loves to save them. That was what Kay said, back when we first found him.’ His voice was just above a whisper. He’d kept the secret so long he could barely speak it. ‘Those fits he used to have, they were visions. We didn’t understand at first. But this one kept coming back.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘I couldn’t, sweetheart. I couldn’t.’

Sweetheart? The word seemed so wrong coming from him. Arthur looked at her, imploring, his face pale and bloodless in the moon-glow. It looked like the face of a dead man. He continued.

‘Kay knew something was coming, something terrible. And he knew only you could stop it.’ He struggled out of bed and leaned heavily against the bedpost. ‘But I would have to die.’

Oh my God. Of course. All to try to stop the tenth plague.

‘That’s why I’ve trained you the way I have, Billi. I had to. D’you think I’d wish this life on anyone, most of all you?’

Kay had tried to tell her. You’re wrong about your father. He knew, he could see, Arthur did love her.

‘But I couldn’t let it show how much it hurt being… cruel. I had to harden your heart. Towards me. Make you ruthless enough to do what was necessary.’

It was sick.

‘So I’d kill you when I had to.’ Billi closed her eyes; her head spun with all this. Her dad had brought her up to kill him. And the other Templars, even Percy, they must have known. She’d been lied to by everybody all her life.

‘Say something, Billi.’

‘Jesus, I never knew how completely insane you were, until now.’ She backed towards the door. She felt trapped and suffocated. ‘You sick, sick bastard! How could you have done this to me?’

Kay opened the door. His hair was tangled, half covering his face, and he looked more dead than her dad. He tried to say something, but instead just stared at the pair of them with bewildered fear. Billi turned on him.

‘And Kay? Did Kay know?’

Arthur shook his head. ‘No. Those visions were driving him beyond madness. Elaine worked endlessly to draw him back. But the power of prophecy was lost.’

She covered her face, not able to cry, not able to scream; trapped between hate and pity. Arthur went to wrap his arms round her.

‘Don’t you touch me.’

He lowered his hands and backed away.

Lies, lies, lies.

The Knights Templar.

Bastards.

They migrated into the lounge. Elaine had pulled the curtains back, letting in the grey pre-dawn light. Arthur shuffled in behind her and Kay just stared.

She should be exhausted, but the trembling energies from the Silver Sword still surged through her, settled deep in the marrow of her bones.

‘Tell me, from the beginning,’ said Arthur.

Billi stared at them. There was a subtle change in each of their faces. Her father looked almost softly at her. The burden of his secret gone, she could see a lightness, only a slight lightness, but something new instead of that mask of iron. But Billi’s fury still bubbled. She couldn’t forgive him for the way he’d treated her. The way they’d all treated her.