Sarwat Chadda - Billi SanGreal 02 - Dark Goddess (7 page)

"Great. She'll be handy if we're ever attacked by demonic daffodils," said Gwaine.

Elaine ignored Gwaine's not-quite-veiled insult. "I brought this." She took out a necklace from her pocket. It was a thin strip of leather strung with silver plaques.

Billi recognized them. Kay had used them when he'd tried to contact the spirit realms. "Maqlu?"

The ancient talismans had been found in an archaeological dig in Iraq, on the site of the ancient city of Nineveh. They were a defense against psychic intrusion.

"Someone might try to possess Vasilisa?" Gwaine asked.

"Just to be sure. Vasilisa has no control over her powers. She can't defend herself. It's possible another psychic, someone with telepathy, could access her mind and manipulate her, albeit temporarily." Elaine handed the necklace to Billi. "Put this on her when she wakes up. Tell her that she can't take it off, understand?"

Billi inspected the plaques, with their minute cuneiform letters—spells carefully carved onto each. "You mean someone like Baba Yaga?"

Elaine nodded. "If she's been consuming other psychics over the centuries, her telepathic powers would be awesome. She'd be an elementalist, spirit-talker, the whole package. It also means she'd be totally insane. That amount of action in one head cannot be healthy. I don't want her in Vasilisa's mind, even fora minute."

"Then the next step is obvious," said Arthur.

"Jerusalem it is," agreed Elaine.

"Wait," Billi interrupted. "What's to stop the Polenitsy from just heading out to Jerusalem and kidnapping Vasilisa there?"

Elaine smiled. "Oh, the Holy City has guardians of its own. Guardians who even the Polenitsy might hesitate to cross."

"Like who?"

Elaine hesitated and shot a wary glance at Arthur. He nodded, but even then Elaine paused. Eventually she spoke. "Jerusalem is under the control of the Assassins."

"Cool." Who didn't know about the Assassins? The Templars and the Assassins had a secret alliance, going back to the Crusades. The two orders had traded knowledge, allies, and enemies. Most of the occult lore the Templars studied was originally gleaned from the Islamic sect of killer mystics. "What are they like?"

Elaine shrugged. "Never met one. They operate through a network of middlemen. The Assassins are sleepers. It'll be someone close, a business ally, a best friend you've known for years. Then one day they get the signal. You only meet an Assassin once in your life. At the very end."

"And that's where we're sending Vasilisa?" Billi asked.

"The Assassins and the Templars have an agreement," said Arthur. "The Treaty of Alamut allows us to train among the fakirs and holy men of Jerusalem. The Oracle will be as safe there as anywhere."

Not Vasilisa anymore, but the Oracle.

"I had some friends in Whitechapel make this, just in case." Arthur took a fake passport out from his desk drawer and tossed it to Elaine. "Take her to Jerusalem."

THE NEXT AFTERNOON BILLI WATCHED VASILISA build a snowman. Middle Temple Gardens was pretty to the snowfall. The office workers stayed indoors, so Vasilisa had spent most of the afternoon rolling a misshapen ball to form the bottom of a snowman, and was now rolling a second ball for the head.

Elaine had been keeping a wary eye out, as had Lance and Bors. They weren't going to let the Oracle out of their sight.

"C'mon, Billi!"

She's happy
. Vasilisa patted the small boulder of snow, trying to keep it in shape. Her hair stuck out from under a woolen bobble hat, and her bare hands were pink, but she didn't care.

"Let's go inside," Billi shouted across the garden. "It's cold." She felt exposed. Anyone could come wandering by and see them. It wasn't safe. But would Vasilisa ever be safe again? Billi had no idea what had happened to Kay out in Jerusalem; he never talked about it. But he'd come back a changed man, more confident, more detached. More powerful by far. What would happen to Vasilisa? What would she be like a few years down the line?

Vasilisa strolled over. "C'mon, come and look! It's almost done."

"We should start packing."

"Why?" Vasilisa brushed the snow off her trousers. "Where are we going?"

No one had told her. The girl was flying to Jerusalem in two days and no one had told her. "Er, somewhere safe."

"I'm safe here, aren't I? With you?"

Billi looked over for Elaine; she'd be better at explaining this. But the old woman was nowhere to be seen. Typical. Billi frowned.

"Let's play, Billi." Vasilisa started away, but Billi took her hand. Despite the freezing temperature, her fingers were warm little sausages.

"Look, Vasilisa. About what happened last night." Billi sat the girl down on a bench. "This power you have, it could be dangerous."

Vasilisa rattled her silver necklace. "No, I'm okay now."

"That may not be enough. You need to learn how to manage your special gifts. There's a place where you can learn how to do that."

"Where?"

"Jerusalem."

Vasilisa sprang up. She stared at Billi. "Jerusalem? But I want to go home to my granny!"

"Vasilisa, if you go back to Karelia, they'll catch you. Elaine will go to Jerusalem with you. To make sure you're settled in. It's... " Billi lowered her head, unwilling to look at the girl. "... It's for the best."

"No, Billi. Please, I don't want to go." Vasilisa's fingers tightened around hers. "Can't I stay with you?"

"No, it wouldn't work. I'm sorry."

"Liar," Vasilisa whispered. Her eyes filled with tears. "You're not sorry." She closed her eyes. "I want my mum and dad back. That's all."

Billi went to put her arm around Vasilisa.

"Don't touch me!" she cried. She dug her fingers into the snowman's head and pushed until the head fell apart, and then trembled with silent sobs.

Billi wanted to tell her that she'd do so much good, that she'd be powerful, someone important. But the words felt meaningless. She sighed, knowing the future meant hardship and misery for the nine-year-old. But there was no alternative. It was God's will.

Deus vult.

It wasn't just the Polenitsy who sacrificed children.

BILLI AWOKE TO THE MUTED SOUNDS OF RATTLING. Pipes came alive as the old water system gurgled into action. At four in the morning. What the hell was going on? It sounded like whoever was on guard duty had decided to run a bath.

Every limb demanded that she stay in bed. Three hours of unarmed combat with Bors had left her aching all over. But she forced herself up and looked out the window. Gareth stood, cold and miserable, in the opposite doorway. He saw the light from her window and waved.

She numbly slid her feet across the bare wooden floorboards until her toes tapped her slippers. She tugged on her dressing gown and wandered on to the landing.

The bathroom door was open and the shower was running. "Hello?"

"Billi... "

"Vasilisa?"

Vasilisa stood in the bath, the dense jet of water bearing down on her. She was still in her pajamas and her hair lay like a curtain over her face. The shower curtain hadn't been drawn, so water was spraying everywhere. Billi rushed forward and icy-cold droplets hit her bare arms.

"Jesus, Vasilisa," Billi swore as she twisted the taps shut. The bottom of the bath was half full. Billi grabbed a towel and wrapped Vasilisa in it. The girl's skin was burning.

"So hot," she said, choking on a half-suppressed sob.

Billi pulled off her own bathrobe and swapped it with Vasilisa's sodden clothes.

"What happened?" said Arthur as he came in, dressed in a pair of baggy sweat pants and a green T-shirt.

"Vasilisa's sick."

Arthur laid his hand against her forehead.

"I can't help it," the little girl murmured. Arthur filled up a glass and got her to take a few gulps.

"Is there a thermometer in these cabinets?" he asked Billi. There were bandages, a box of syringes, tubs of antibiotics, and at the bottom, in a silver case, the thermometer. Billi handed it to her dad. They both turned to Vasilisa. She was on the stool, sweating, her hands clasped tightly around the glass.

The water in it boiled. It bubbled over, and steam rose from the puddles on the floor. Small red burns marked Vasilisa's hands, but she didn't seem to feel them.

"Bring Elaine up," ordered Arthur as he put Vasilisa's hands under the tap.

Elaine was on the couch, asleep in front of the muted TV.

Billi shook the old woman. "Dad wants you. Quickly."

Elaine nodded and stood up, straightening her shawl. Billi was about to follow when the screen caught her attention.

At first it looked like snow falling, but it was too gray, too dirty. A man's shoulders were covered with it, and long streaks of ash ran down his smart suit. His face, too, was coated in soot; the ash was everywhere. He stood in a square filled with people. Car horns screamed in the background, and lights flashed behind him.

Nicholas Rhodes, live from Naples
, ran the headline on the screen. Billi paused, caught between the desire to help Vasilisa and the apocalyptic scenes on the screen.

"... It's unbelievable. Even in all this smoke, you can see the glow surrounding the edge of the crater. And the column, it just goes up and up... " The radio crackled and the voice faded in, then away, but there was no mistaking the excitement and fear in the broadcaster's voice.

The road signs and advertisements, those not completely lost in the fog of ash, were all in Italian. But behind them, Billi saw the burning mountain and gasped.

It climbed like a tidal wave behind the city, a black silhouette crowned by a red-lit cone. Mount Vesuvius. A huge column of black smoke rose straight into the sky. Occasionally a flash of sky-hurled lava would light up the rolling clouds, and lightning stabbed against the rising black tower. The camera shook as a roar broke out of the TV. People started screaming, and bumped and pushed past the newsman. He almost fell under a surge of panicking locals. The screen went blank, but the voices carried on.

"Don't lose the camera... There it is!"

The picture was suddenly restored, and showed the newsman, Nicholas Rhodes, staring into the camera, close up and coughing. His red eyes ran with tears, but he couldn't speak. The ash was too thick, muting even the cries coming from around them.

The ground shook, and again the camera went dark, but then the screen was filled with the blurred image of another eruption. The dense cloud rising out of the cone fattened, then collapsed, rolling down on itself, flooding the mountaintop, slipping like overflowing boiling water out of a pan.

"Oh my God," muttered the cameraman. "C'mon, Nick. We've got to run." But he kept filming even as he backed away.

The crater top was gone now as the black cloud dropped down on top of it. Waves of ash and smoke threw newspapers, litter, any loose thing into the air. People fell and were trampled. Cars crashed and drivers scrambled out of their windows as the square grid locked.

"What is it?" shouted Nicholas at his cameraman. A howling rose through the streets. People grabbed on to each other as winds shook the white-coated trees.

Windows in apartments overlooking the square shattered.

Pyroclastic surge
, thought Billi. Hadn't it all been in that Latin book? Superheated poisonous gases traveling at hundreds of miles per hour, incinerating everything in its path. It was the surge that had annihilated Pompeii back in a.d.

79. The ash fall had merely buried an already extinct city. There was no escape. "No use, no use," said the cameraman. The camera lowered to dangle over a pair of boots. "We're dead."

The camera swung back and forth. The sound was just screaming and the roaring of the wind. Then the camera went up and Nicholas was back on the screen, his red tear-filled eyes staring straight at Billi, straight at them all.

"Keep filming," he said grimly. He steadied himself and ran his hand through his hair, shaking ash off his hands.

"I love you," he said. "I just wanted to say that I love you, Maggie." He was shouting now as the wailing around them became deafening. "Tell the girls Daddy is thinking of them." His voice was hoarse and he cradled the camera with both hands. "Tell them I love—"

The screen crackled, filled with electronic snow, then went black and silent. The only thing left on it was the headline,
Nicholas Rhodes, live from Naples
, then that too disappeared. The picture went back to the studio. The anchorwoman stared dumbly at her monitor.

Billi raced up the stairs.

Elaine and Arthur held Vasilisa in the half-filled tub. The water steamed, and both were using soaking towels to hold the semiconscious girl; she was too hot to touch.

"What's she doing?" Billi could only think of that eruption. "She's not
doing
anything! Something's happening to her!" snapped Elaine.

Vasilisa jerked savagely, almost breaking free. Water splashed everywhere as she fought. Her eyes were squeezed shut. "This is what she wants!" she screamed. She grabbed Arthur's arm, staring madly at him. Billi held her shoulders and watched the girl's eyes darken, the pale blue melting into black. "This is what she wants!"

Elaine fumbled for the talismans around Vasilisa's neck and pressed them against her temples.

"Fight. Fight her," she whispered.

Vasilisa glared, snapping her teeth in fury. "Foo
LiisH
." It was just a word, a curse, but it wasn't Vasilisa. She hissed in a cacophony of dozens of discordant tongues. She clawed at Elaine's face and left red-hot blisters down her cheek. Then Vasilisa's eyes lost focus, glazing over. Her eyelids fluttered, and she slumped into the water.

The water in the bath continued to steam, and Arthur pulled back his hand, which was ringed with bums. It was sauna hot in here, and the temperature was still rising.

"Snow," Billi said. "Put her in the snow."

What happens to her affects the natural world. What happens to the natural world affects her.