BILLI SLEPT IN THE VAN AND ONLY STARTED TO STIR when the tires trundled over the cobbles of Temple District.
Home.
She sat up and leaned over the passenger seat. It was still early, and the sun wouldn’t be up for a few hours yet. The van’s engine echoed within the narrow confines of the alleyways that dropped south of Fleet Street and into Temple District. Bors was slumped in the passenger seat, his twin swords beside him. Billi knocked them onto the floor with a clatter as she climbed up front.
“Oi, watch it,” muttered Bors as he rubbed the sleep out of his face. Blinking blearily, he searched the dashboard until his hand found a sausage roll, which he shoved into his mouth. He caught Billi’s stare. “Sorry,” he said, spitting flakes over his lap. “Did you want some?”
“God Almighty, d’you have a trough at home or what?”
They entered the main Temple parking lot and found Father Rowland waiting for them with Mordred, the new squire. The chaplain’s thin frame was lost in a huge black overcoat, his bald head and the tips of his frozen ears the only things visible above his scarf.
Bors jumped out the moment the van halted. He handed his swords over to Mordred. “Polish these.” He licked the last few crumbs off his fingers. “And before breakfast, mind.”
The two couldn’t be more different. Mordred, an Ethiopian refugee the Order had literally picked up off the streets, was tall and elegant, with jet-black skin and deep thoughtful eyes. Bors, bigger in girth if not height, was a cannonball of muscle. His neck was nonexistent, his jaw comprised of a patch of ginger bristles, and his eyes were piggy and close together. But he was a knight, and Mordred was a squire.
“Want him to run your bath while he’s at it?” said Billi as Mordred left.
Bors laughed.
Father Rowland helped Elaine out and peered in behind her.
“Where’s Pelleas?”
Elaine looked at Billi. “You want to tell him?”
No, not really. But Elaine had already wandered off.
“Dead, Father.”
“Oh.” Rowland touched his crucifix. “What happened?”
Billi reminded herself that this was all new for Rowland. The previous Temple chaplain had just been buried when Rowland had arrived, fresh-faced and eager, all peachy keen from the seminary. He had thought he’d be running choirs and carrying out christenings. Billi had turned up at the chaplain’s house with Arthur and a few of the others. An unofficial welcoming committee. All in all he’d taken it well. Rowland was to manage the day-to-day affairs of the Temple Church except when the Templars themselves required it. He was responsible for disposing of the bodies and managing their library: the remnants of the original library of occult lore the Templars had salvaged from the Inquisition.
Only later did Billi notice the empty wine bottles piling up in the recycling box outside his door. He looked like he could do with a drink right now.
“Werewolves,” Billi said.
Arthur’s Jaguar rolled up. Lance lifted the sleeping Vasilisa from the backseat while Arthur and Gwaine joined Billi and Rowland. Over his shoulder Arthur carried his chain-mail shirt, rolled up and held in a bundle by an old leather belt. In his right hand he carried the Templar Sword.
Arthur turned to Gwaine. “I want a conclave sorted. We need to review what happened tonight.” He inspected his watch. “Couple of hours’ rest, then we’ll talk at six thirty.” Gwaine nodded and left to make arrangements.
Rowland put his hand on Arthur’s shoulder, like a good priest should. “I’ve just heard about Pelleas, Arthur.” He frowned with concern. “Is there anything you need?”
“Shovels,” said Arthur. He pointed toward his car. “Pelleas is in the trunk.”
“You’re…you’re joking, of course,” said Rowland.
Arthur did not have his joking face on. He turned to Billi. “Go with Lance. Put Vasilisa in the spare bedroom.”
“She’s staying with us?” Billi asked. She pulled the blanket over her shoulders. The girl had just seen her parents slaughtered, and they were leaving Billi to pick up the pieces. She didn’t want to be dealing with a hysterical kid first thing in the morning. “It’s not my job to babysit. Give her to Rowland.”
“Your job is to do what I tell you.” Arthur settled the weight of his armor better. “Now, Billi.”
Billi headed toward home on Middle Temple Lane, followed by Lance, who carried the sleeping girl in his arms.
The smell of fresh paint still lingered as she entered their house. Billi inspected the limp fern beside the door. Their attempt to bring some life into their home was failing miserably. None of the paintings were back up yet, except one. Jacques de Molay, the last Templar Grand Master, gazed down at them as they came in.
“Top of the stairs, Lance. I’ll bring some blankets.”
Lance nodded and eased Vasilisa through the doorway and up the steps.
Billi stopped in front of the portrait. As a kid she’d always felt a little scared passing under it.
Now?
These days she didn’t feel anything.
A short nap and Billi was up by six. She dressed, checked that the poultice was still in place and she hadn’t grown a fur pelt overnight. So far-not hairy. If she was infected, the pain of transformation would come with the moonlight, growing stronger as the moon waxed.
She struggled to put her shirt on. Her muscles complained loudly about the treatment they’d received last night. The fragrance of warm bread was rising out of the kitchen as she opened her bedroom door.
“Bonjour, Bilqis,” said Lance as Billi wandered into the kitchen. Lance slid open the oven and drew out a tray of golden croissants. He emptied them onto a china dish with a shake. “Breakfast?”
Of course. Guard duty. Arthur must have arranged a rotation of knights to protect Vasilisa. The werewolves weren’t going to give up their prey that easily. Sooner or later they’d come around here, trying to sniff her out.
Billi sat at the table while Lance stirred up a cup of hot chocolate. She could only remember being made breakfast once before.
Kay had dished up her usual: muesli and a dollop of honey. Exactly two months and nineteen days ago.
Lance knew his way around a kitchen. The Frenchman had been a patisserie chef in Marseilles. He’d also been a smuggler before getting involved with the Templars. Billi didn’t know the full story, but that’s how he’d lost his eye.
Billi rocked back on her chair and looked around. Her wakizashi was leaning against the table. She picked it up and checked the blade: clean and perfect.
“I thought you might like that back,” said Lance. “I found it in the farmhouse.”
“Thanks. I’m seeing Percy after school. Wasn’t looking forward to telling him I’d lost his favorite sword.” She put it down on the table. “What else did you find?”
“Little of use.”
Billi glanced at yesterday’s newspaper, which her dad had spread out to soak up the oil he used for weapons cleaning. The usual blah-blah. Political scandals. More trouble in the Middle East. Football reports and who was wearing what at some charity do last night. Her gaze rested on the image of a smoldering volcano. Out in Italy, Vesuvius was rumbling, as it had been on and off for a month. Half of Naples had been evacuated; half couldn’t make up its mind.
She was doing Vesuvius as part of her Latin course. It was the one subject she excelled in. There were plans for a school trip in the summer to look at the ruins of Pompeii, the Roman city that had been wiped out by the last big eruption, back in a.d. 79. It would be cool to go, and Billi knew if she asked her dad he’d say yes.
Billi scrunched the paper up. No, she had her Templar duties. Only they mattered.
A plate clattered in front of her. The croissant had been gently torn open, and butter lay, molten and puddled, within it.
“Voilà.” Lance leaned against the table, waiting. “Eat, please.”
Billi took a bite and the croissant nearly dissolved in her mouth.
“Wow,” she whispered.
He shrugged like it was nothing; excellence came easily to him. Then he started to set up another meal on a tray: breakfast for Vasilisa.
Billi glanced toward the door and the stairs. The girl felt like an uninvited houseguest, an intruder. Why? She didn’t mean anything to Billi, so what was it about her that made Billi so uncomfortable? She should be glad: if Vasilisa was an Oracle, she’d strengthen the Order. But Billi wasn’t glad, and couldn’t understand why.
“How is she?”
“Still asleep.” Lance glanced up at the clock over the doorway. It was almost half past six. “I will leave some food; you will take it later?”
Billi nodded and popped the last of the croissant into her mouth as she stood. The conclave was starting.
Billi ran across the courtyard. God didn’t like to be kept waiting. Neither did her dad.
Billi rushed across the ice-covered Temple courtyard in her tanned army greatcoat that, despite her height, swept her ankles. Collar up, chin down, she blinked as the frosty breeze stung her eyes. The Temple Church was hidden behind towers of scaffolding and sheets of heavy-duty plastic. The repairs were moving slowly-you didn’t rush on a nine-hundred-year-old building. The stained-glass windows were all boarded up, and it would be another year before they could be replaced.
She paused by the side door, her hand touching the cold stone. The official story was that a forgotten UXB-an unexploded bomb-had gone off in the catacombs. The building had been bombed during the Second World War, so it was possible that one of the devices had somehow been buried, and sat silent and dormant for all these years until a freak event set it off.
It was logical. It had a basis in reality.
It was a lie.
The truth had a basis in another reality. Had she really met the devil here? Had he really unleashed his celestial numina, his supernatural light, almost blinding her and nearly destroying Temple Church?
Like the thrones of ancient kings, nine high-backed chairs had been arranged in an irregular circle between the effigies of the ancient patrons lying in stone on the floor.
Elaine and Father Rowland sat apart on smaller stools, observing, but not belonging.
The Knights Templar. Arthur, the Templar Master, looked tired and was turning his wedding ring around, never a good sign. Gwaine sat opposite, in his usual position of conflict. In the gloomy light his wrinkles looked like deep crevasses, and his eyes were lost in the pits under his lined brow. Gareth, Bors, and Mordred watched impassively. Billi looked at the Sièges Perilous-two chairs draped in black cloth, commemorating the Order’s dead. Kay and now Pelleas. Percy’s old position, marshall, was now Lance’s.
Billi kept her head low as she crossed the circle to her seat between Mordred and Bors. Mordred gave her a sympathetic smile as she passed. The church was unheated, and Billi’s breath puffed out in a great white cloud as she took her seat.
“Now that we’re all here, maybe we can get down to business,” Arthur said. He stood up and went to the center of the round. “Pelleas’s death and the girl: Vasilisa Bulgakov.” He lowered his head. “Father Rowland will lead a requiem Mass for Pelleas tomorrow night. Attendance, it goes without saying, is mandatory.” He beckoned Elaine forward. “Tell us what you know.”
Elaine came to the edge of the circle. “While you’ve all been catching up on your beauty sleep, I did some sniffing around. Vasilisa and her family came to England four years ago, when she was five. They’re originally from Russia-from Karelia. It’s up north on the border with Finland.”
“That’s important?” asked Gwaine.
“It’s pretty wild. Lots of wolves.” Elaine opened up her folder and handed out a sheet of scanned pictures. “Of all the packs, they hunt Spring Children most eagerly.”
The photos were of the patio outside Vasilisa’s parents’ farmhouse. The light exposed something Billi hadn’t noticed last night. The flagstones bore strange carvings.
“These are petroglyphs. Copies of the ones found in Karelia. The original is over five thousand years old. This one”-she pointed at a stick figure with two circles for breasts and branchlike hands. In one hand was a disk, in the other a crescent-“it’s the Polenitsy’s goddess image.”
“Eorpata,” muttered Gwaine. Billi frowned. He would always use ancient Greek or Latin when English would do just as well. Fortunately, she knew ancient Greek. Unlike Mordred.
“Man-killers,” Billi whispered to him.
Elaine nodded. “The Polenitsy are an all-female werewolf pack descended from the original Amazons. Out of all the werewolves, they follow the ways of the goddess closest. You might call them fundamentalists.”
“They’re a long way from home,” said Arthur.
“They could be desperate. Oracles aren’t common. The Bodmin pack no longer hunts Spring Children, and neither do the Irish wolves, the only other big pack nearby.” Elaine tapped her nails on the top of Gareth’s chair. “I’m convinced they’re the ones after Vasilisa, and they are not going to back down quietly. They’re old-school.”
“And we’ll deal with them the same way we’ve dealt with all the others,” said Gwaine.
Elaine didn’t reply, but Billi could see her doubts. She turned her attention to the photographs. There were markings above the image of the Polenitsy goddess symbol. She could just make out a crucifix. Not like the plain cross of Western Christianity, but the Russian Orthodox cross, with three horizontal bars, the lowest one slanted.
“What’s this?” She pointed at the cross.
Elaine continued. “I think the Bulgakovs were, in their own crude way, trying to guard against the goddess. A lot of people believe the crucifix is the perfect defense against all the Unholy.”
“It didn’t work,” snorted Bors.
“Believing in something doesn’t make it real,” said Arthur. “So is Vasilisa an Oracle?”
Elaine shook her head. “I don’t know yet. Her parents knew something was up. But she’s young, and even if she does have powers, they’ll manifest themselves irregularly and she’ll have no conscious control of them.”
“But Kay was showing telepathic powers at nine-the same age as this Vasilisa,” said Billi.
Elaine laughed. “Kay was an extraordinarily powerful psychic. We won’t come across his like again. No, if Vasilisa has some talent, it won’t be at Kay’s level.”
“Don’t you have tests or something you could do?” Billi continued.
“You can’t just stick a meter in her and get a reading.” Elaine held up her hands, fingers out. “There are six classes of Oracle: mentalists like Kay-mind reading and all that telekinetic stuff. Then you’ve got the mediums, or spirit-talkers, as they’re called nowadays. Healers. Elementalists. The fire-starters, and finally the prophets.” Elaine closed her hands into fists. “Youngsters usually have a bit of ability in each, but that settles down into one or two fields by puberty. Kay was amazing…” There was more than a hint of pride when Elaine talked about her last, best pupil. “He still retained powers in mind-reading, spirit-talking, and prophecy well into his teens. But it’ll take time to pin Vasilisa down, assuming she is psychic, of course.”
“You still haven’t answered the question,” interrupted Gwaine. “Is she an Oracle?”
Elaine scratched her chin. “The werewolves would call her a Spring Child. They believe the goddess will reward them with a good spring and bountiful hunting if they sacrifice Oracles to her during the full moon. The spirit of the child is taken by the goddess, renewing her, and the body is eaten by the pack.”
“Good God,” whispered Mordred.
“They’re called the Unholy for a reason,” replied Billi. “But human sacrifice was fairly common in primitive religions.” She’d studied how the followers of the goddess would take their victim, all garlanded in flowers and jewels, toa sacred spot, be it a cave or glade or lake. After killing the victim, the priestess, in the guise of the goddess, would then butcher the body and pass it among the faithful.
“And this goddess? Who is she?” asked Mordred.
“Gaia. Hecate. Morrigan. Isis,” said Elaine with a shrug. “She’s the goddess of nature, the wild, and of magic. She’s been revered since prehistoric times, and each culture had a different name for her. But the Polenitsy call her by her old, old name.” Elaine looked around the circle. “Baba Yaga.”
“But she’s just a name from fairy tales,” said Mordred. “She’s not real.”
“No, she’s real, all right. An ancient, wise, and very evil old witch.” Elaine’s eyes narrowed as she observed the young squire. “And once people worshipped her as much as we do our gods now.”
“The tales must have begun with someone, I suppose,” said Gareth.
Elaine nodded. “Imagine someone coming to your tribe. She can control the elements. Read minds and speak with the animals. Heal injuries with a touch. What would you think?”
“You’d think she was a god,” agreed Mordred reluctantly.
Elaine pointed at the crucifix on the far wall. “Is her story so different from his?” Arthur snorted. “You’re saying Baba Yaga is like Jesus? You’re going to burn in Hell for that, Elaine.”
“Time passes,” continued Elaine. “Baba Yaga’s powers wane. The new religion rises, Christianity, and together with advancing civilization it drives her deeper into the wilderness. Year by year, century by century, people forget. Only a few still remember the old religion, and among them are the Polenitsy. They feed her the souls of the Spring Children; she absorbs their powers, memories, and lives and is kept going, weak and decrepit, but alive.”
“Is that possible? To be alive for so long?” Billi asked Elaine. If all this were true, then Baba Yaga must have killed thousands-tens of thousands-over her vast life.
“It’s called the Ritual of Devouring, and it is the darkest maleficia,” said Elaine, using the Templar term for black magic. “A powerful psychic is able to rip the life force from another psychic, which is why Baba Yaga consumes only… gifted children; a normal one wouldn’t benefit her at all.”
“Consumes?” asked Billi.
Elaine opened her mouth wide and mimed putting food in. “Eats them whole.” She patted her belly. “That’s what a sacrifice ritual is, after all. The soul of the victim goes to renew the life force of the god. In Baba Yaga’s case it is literally true.”
“So Vasilisa is food for this Baba Yaga,” muttered Mordred. “If she’s an Oracle.”
“And if she isn’t?” snapped Gwaine. “Pelleas would have died for nothing.”
Arthur stood up again. “We don’t leave innocent children to be kidnapped and eaten by werewolves. Pelleas did not die for nothing.” He nodded at Elaine, and she sat down. He looked around the circle. “Vasilisa will stay with us until we find out if she’s psychic or not. If she isn’t, we’ll arrange for her to be adopted somewhere safe. If she is, she’ll be recruited into the Order and will begin training.” He looked at Billi. “If God wills it, Vasilisa will be a Knight Templar.”
“Hold on, Billi!”
Billi had been hurrying out after matins prayers when Elaine dashed across the courtyard, calling to her. She stopped beneath the Templar column, a thirty-foot-high stone post topped by the Order’s emblem: two knights riding a single horse. Billi checked her watch. An hour before school. She’d drop off breakfast for the girl, then head to the armory and get some sparring in. Next time she met those loonies she wanted to be ready.
“Just a sec.” Elaine stopped to catch her breath.
“Those cigarettes will kill you.”
“A lot of things will kill you.” Elaine put her hand on Billi’s arm. “Just wanted to find out how the poultice was holding up.” She glanced over her shoulder to make sure the other Templars had gone. “Maybe we could have a chat? You had breakfast?”
“A bowl of Purina. Delicious.” The wounds still itched, but that meant the herbs were working their magic. A few more days and she’d take them off, fully healed. But Elaine’s attention wasn’t on Billi’s injuries; the old woman had something else on her mind. “What do you want, Elaine?” Billi cupped her hands and blew into them. “It’s freezing out here.”
Elaine glanced in the direction of Billi’s house. “How’s our young guest?”
Billi shrugged. “How d’you think?”
“Remember when Kay first came? It was just like this.”
Billi’s eyes narrowed. “Was it?”
“You and him were as thick as thieves.” Elaine looked deep into Billi’s eyes. “He was a frightened little boy, and you looked after him, Billi. It wasn’t your job to, but you did. That’s what the old Billi did.”
Billi moved Elaine’s hand off her arm. “I am not that child anymore.”
“I’m just saying that girl needs a friend, someone who’s been where she’s been. Things are going to be hard for her.”
“Oh, and they weren’t hard for me?”
She’d been forced into the Order at ten. The next five years of her life had been an utter misery of endless training and bruises and lying at school. Her friends had slowly dwindled, and when Kay had been sent off to Jerusalem for further training, she’d spent all her time alone.
“That’s not what I’m saying and you know it. Don’t you care what happens to her? Don’t you care-”
Billi interrupted. “No, I don’t care.” She couldn’t afford to. “All I care aboutis the Order now.”
“You cared about Kay.”
“That was a mistake.”
Elaine shook her head. “I was wrong about you, Billi.” She started across the courtyard. “I thought Kay’s sacrifice meant something.”
“It means I should have been a better Templar.” If she had been, Kay might have lived.
Elaine shuffled away, head lowered and weary. “You are your father’s daughter.”