The lonely child sat shrivelled in her bed wrapped in shroud-white sheets and gazed at her with maggot-filled eye sockets. Things wriggled under her tissue-thin skin. Grotesque skeletal flies sat feeding off dripping, oozing flesh, and rank odours and putrescent vapours wheezed out of the girl’s lungs. The child breathed through an opened mouth lined with yellow teeth loosely bound to decayed, blackened gums, and her slime-coated tongue hung limp over her white lips.
‘No,’ Billi whispered, backing away from Kay, shaking her head free of the hideous image. She stumbled out of the corridor, fighting down the bitter, metallic bile climbing up her throat. Kay caught up with her and pulled them both through the doorway into the stairwell. Billi leaned against the wall, teeth clamped together, and waited for the nausea to pass.
‘What is it? What’s happening to her?’ She’d never seen anything like it. She couldn’t remember anything like this in any of the old manuscripts, the old Templar diaries. Kay squeezed her, his chest touched her back.
‘I don’t know.’ He turned back towards the door. ‘But I think this is only the beginning.’
Billi called her dad while Kay got the teas. They’d found a greasy spoon cafe off the high street, empty but for some old guy with a beard stirring his coffee endlessly and muttering at a blank spot on the wall. Faded posters of Caribbean beaches and white Alpine mountains decorated the walls, corners curled and ochre from cigarette smoke. She couldn’t get through; the phone went straight to messaging. She’d finally got Percy. He’d told them to sit tight; he was on his way.
When she went back in Kay had the teas and a bun waiting. He clutched the mug tightly, but his fingers still trembled.
‘You OK?’
He smiled weakly. ‘Been better.’
‘What’s happening to her?’
‘It’s a sickness, a disease, attacking her through the Ethereal Realm. Those… flies are slowly eating her soul. I could see her aura, but it was barely there. Once they’ve done it the body will just die.’
‘Can’t you do anything?’ she asked. Her stomach twisted at the memories of those flies. Kay didn’t even look up.
So the little girl was going to die, and there was nothing they could do about it. Billi thought about her, just lying there blankly gazing at the ceiling. That was how it was going to be, a small, pointless death and her last memory, the one she took with her to the grave, was going to be of a light bulb in the ceiling. Maybe Arthur would know a way to save her. Hold on, hadn’t she read somewhere that people could live, even without their souls?
Kay’s eyebrows arched, sensing her thoughts. ‘Without her soul it’s better that she dies, Billi.’
She tried not to think about the little boy from her Ordeal, Alex Weeks.
Kay leaned across and tilted her chin up gently so that she had to look at him. ‘Billi, without a soul we lose that one part of us that’s divine, the Breath of God. The path of the soulless leads only to damnation. Only the vilest, most evil person would consider it.’
‘Or the most desperate.’ Billi couldn’t get Rebecca out of her mind.
‘Without a soul, a void is left that creates a terrible, endless hunger. One they’ll try desperately to fill…’
‘With blood,’ Billi finished for him.
Kay nodded. ‘The taste of a person’s soul lingers in their lifeblood, in their flesh. The Hungry Dead feed on that. It sustains them for a while, but the taste is never enough. Then they kill again. And again. Each time, the soul they briefly sup on becomes less and less sustaining. The worst are reduced to eating corpses.’
Vampires. Nosferatu. Lamia. All cultures had their own name for them, the Hungry Dead. The Templars used the old Arabic word.
‘Ghuls,’ said Billi. ‘You think Rebecca will become one of the Hungry Dead?’
Kay shook his head. ‘I don’t think so, you need to choose to surrender your soul to become a ghul, that’s clearly not what Rebecca’s doing.’ He frowned, mockingly. ‘But don’t you pay any attention to Occult Lore? Balin must be pretty disappointed.’
‘You must offer your soul, willingly, to someone capable of consuming it, an Ethereal. It’s usually a devil, and it then passes some of its own essence into the now soulless body. It’s not an easy transfer. It takes a lot out of the Ethereal. Even a single trade can weaken one for years. That’s why these sorts of deals aren’t that common. Otherwise devils would be creating ghuls all over the place.’
‘So you sell your soul. For what?’
‘For wealth. Power. Immortality.’ Kay stared out of the window. ‘Nothing important.’
Billi looked at his reflection, half lost in the darkness beyond.
‘How can you stand it?’ she said. ‘To see such things?’ She’d been shaken badly, but Billi knew even the horror she’d witnessed was a faded and weak image of what was really happening to the girl. Kay would have seen it ten times more clearly. If that was what his gift gave him she was thankful she wasn’t an Oracle.
‘You have to take the good with the bad.’ He smiled, but the smile was drawn and desperate.
‘Meaning?’
Kay sat, looking at his mug. The brown liquid gently quivered in unison with his own shaking hands. He let out a slow, cooling breath and the tea settled and was still.
‘You don’t know…’ He looked up at her, as if he was going to say something, then dropped his head again. ‘Not everything I see is ugly.’
‘What else?’
Kay stretched out his arms, his fingertips spread as far as they would go. ‘Amazing sights, Billi.’ He smiled at something and Billi couldn’t believe it was Kay. The smile was so sincere, so full, she felt almost ashamed she’d seen it. It was too personal. Someone’s secret smile. ‘Sometimes, Billi, sometimes we shine so very bright.’ He folded his arms back around himself. ‘It sort of restores your faith in things, y’know?’
‘Kay, you are très strange.’
‘But in a good way, right?’
Billi laughed. Maybe some of the old Kay was still there after all. She looked into his blue eyes and was caught by the deepness of their colour. She fell silent, her laugh snatched away.
Billi’s mobile rang. Saved by the bell. She pulled her gaze away from Kay. She didn’t recognize the number.
‘Hello?’
‘Billi? It’s me, Mike.’
Mike, she couldn’t believe it. Nothing all week and he calls now?
She looked awkwardly at Kay. ‘It’s… not a great time, Mike.’ Any second Percy was going to come barging in, probably with half the Order in tow too. Kay hadn’t taken his eyes off her so she gave him a half frown and walked away from the table.
‘You busy?’ Mike asked. ‘Just thought we might have that tea. There’s a great cafe round the corner from you. Interested?’
Billi hesitated. After what she’d seen at the hospital she knew things were going to hot up back at the Templar preceptory. She needed to keep her nights free. Then she thought back to how her dad had treated Mike – had treated her even – and made a sudden decision.
‘Yeah, I’d love to.’
They made plans to meet tomorrow evening, not far from the Temple. Billi snapped her mobile shut and waited for her heart rate to slow down.
She’d made a date. It had been easy.
Then why was she feeling so flustered? She put her mobile away and wondered if this wasn’t the beginning of something new: something of her own outside of the Templars – beyond her dad’s control.
‘Who was that?’ asked Kay. He was just behind her. Not at the table like he should be.
‘Just a friend.’
‘Who?’
‘For God’s sake, Kay, you are not my keeper!’ As soon as she’d said it she wished she hadn’t. She saw the darkened look. She had no time to pander to his fragile ego. He’d left her by herself for a whole year and now he’d just have to deal with the fact that she had a new life.