CHAPTER TWO
A newspaper broadsheet tumbled over the frozen mud of the battlefield, a dark silhouette against the blood-smeared horizon. Jules Lacroix blinked. No, not blood. Blood never remained that aggressive shade for long. That particular vibrancy was just the rising sun. Jules let out a long breath. The endless night was almost done. Praise the Deathless God.
The broadsheet caught against a coil of barbed wire, fluttering in the wind. As though unwilling to be rid of imminent death just yet, Jules stood brushing ice off his shoulders. What news from Rome?
Eyeing the tattered broadsheet, Jules pulled himself over the edge of the trench, scrabbling in the mud to reach it. Ignoring tired shouts, he grabbed the newspaper and slid back to safety just as gunfire ate up the mud. He grinned, sliding down the wall as his legs collapsed beneath him.
Someone kicked his boot. ‘Crazy motherfucker.’
Yeah, and? Jules smoothed the broadsheet over his knees, smearing mud and printing ink.
Most of the soldiers in the trench with him were new, so green they still had the puppy fat of youth. Still remembered the taste of croissants, the scent of snow untainted by gunpowder and blood, remembered what it was like to close their eyes without seeing death painted on the backs of their eyelids. He didn’t know any of them by name. Not one. And he wouldn’t bother learning, either. Not when they’d only die like all the rest.
Jules drank in the large type of the headline: ROME CRIES BLOOD . He smirked slightly, knowing the headline wasn’t about the war. Their blood didn’t count. No doubt some exorcist had left a trail of carnage again. It happened a lot. Demons didn’t go down easy. He knew that better than most.
The most powerful demons could kill a regiment single-handed. The ones who played with fire or wind, or spoke to the wild things. The ones who controlled ice. Jules could count on one hand the number of times a demon like that had been within even a hundred miles. Otherwise he wouldn’t be breathing.
With shaking fingers Jules withdrew a tin of slender black cigarettes and put one between his lips, but the matches were damp and wouldn’t strike. ‘Shit.’
He squinted at the date. January 6. He turned nineteen today. It was four years to the day since the orphanage in Nice had given him the steel-capped boot an hour before dawn. He’d been only fifteen. That auspicious age when French boys with no family and fewer prospects were shipped off to war.
Matron had dragged him out by his ear. ‘Out with you, little thorn. Fifteen today and a man in all ways but the ones that count! Now you can change that last, at least.’
And so he had.
He put away his cigarette tin, eyes roaming the page.
VIGIL FOR THE LOST AS Vatican contend with a surge of demon activity. The Office of the Exorcist Primus has refused to make a statement about the recent clashes between their exorcists and demons.
News out of the Holy Vatican Empire’s great capital is unclear at best, but unofficial word from the Office of the Imperium Bellum is that there is ‘no cause for alarm’.
Uncorroborated reports belie these claims, with eyewitness testimony suggesting greater numbers of low-class demons have been terrorizing Rome in recent weeks, leading to a rising death toll that is as yet unconfirmed.
In light of this, we must ask ourselves, what is to be done? Can Rome survive this adversity? Talks persist of shifting the capital as another exodus sweeps the population …
Rome . The Holy Vatican Empire was a ravenous beast devouring all Europe. Now even their proud French newspapers spent ink on constant speculation about the capital, where the Deathless God resided in His steepled churches that had grown jagged and dark, their stone spires edging toward the sky as the exorcists built up their defences. All to protect their God from the demons who wanted to prove that Deathless was not a permanent state of being, only wishful thinking.
He considered dropping the newspaper into the slurry beneath his feet, but thought better of it and tucked it into his pocket instead.
‘Jules, get up from there. You’re done.’
He reached for the rough wooden bar of the trench, the splinters biting his palm proof enough he was alive as he pulled himself nose to nose with his superior. Frost gilded his eyelashes and eyebrows and probably his stubble since yesterday’s shave. The cold was inside his bones. Had been for four years, since he began haunting the no-man’s land outside Ostrava with the rest of his regiment.
He could barely remember what warmth felt like.
‘Sergeant—’
‘Corporal Lacroix, that was not a request.’
Jules sighed, pushing his hands into his pockets.
‘How long since you’ve slept? How long since you’ve eaten?’
Jules shook his head, unable to answer either question. ‘Farah—’
‘My name is not an answer, Corporal. You look half dead.’ The hard line between her brows deepened, and he could see what she was thinking, More than half.
Jules pressed his lips together, watching a place behind her ear. She was right. And maybe he should be. Dead with the rest of his regiment.
Farah snapped her fingers in his face, drawing back his wandering mind. Worry worked its way into her eyes, and for the first time he considered that maybe she was right to be concerned. As he followed her back through the trenches toward their main encampment, nestled in the lee of Ostrava’s crumbling stone wall, he wavered on his feet. Hunger was not new, far from it, but this hollow ache had settled in beneath his ribs.
Farah caught him, ducking beneath his arm. ‘Damn it, Lacroix. Starving yourself will not buy us victory.’
‘Worth a try.’ He let a small grin tip his lips.
She shook her head, frustration darkening her eyes. Just a few years older than Jules, not even twenty-five, and already silver glinted in the gold at her temples. Unlike him, she’d volunteered for this—trained for this. But still, war ate them all.
‘Jules, you need to take care of yourself. You’re the last of my original men. Don’t make me walk forward alone.’ Farah looked away, gazing blankly over the frozen mud. After a pause she added in the clipped tone of his superior, ‘Besides, Rome cannot afford to lose you.’
As Farah led Jules along the path furthest from the grimmest of front-line trenches, Jules recognized a few faces. They watched him warily, nodding when he caught their eye. He could be back here too, warmer and drier than the pups at the front.
Lacroix. How many kills? Does that make it a hundred, Lacroix? Two hundred? More?
Jules heard them as though they screamed at him, and looked away. Two hundred demon kills would be admirable for sure, but it was nowhere near the reality. His hands were dark with blood. But the worst part was how intrinsic it felt to him. The strength of his body. The pull of the kill. Being truly excellent at something. When it was just him with a blade in his hand, the world became quiet. His choices simple.
Live or die.
Fight or die.
Kill or die.
And he was good at it. Sometimes he hated how good.
Absently Jules tugged at his sleeve. Countless pale scars twined in neat rows past his elbows. He felt eyes on him and adjusted his shirt cuff lower, hiding …
The ozone scent of distant lightning made his nose itch. Jules tipped his head, closing his eyes for a moment. A storm thickened the air, making it almost crackle with intent. The blood red of pre-dawn had diluted into a weak piss yellow, and when Jules narrowed his eyes against the rising sun, he could see storm clouds gathering nearly out of sight.
He almost slammed into Farah, tugging again at his sleeve.
‘Inside.’ She held open the canvas door of her tent, not missing his gesture.
‘Farah—’
‘Sergeant Bachelet.’
Jules rolled his eyes and ducked under her arm, ignoring the whistles that abruptly ceased when Farah cut the offending parties a sharp look. Dropping the door and lending them some semblance of privacy, she set a kettle on to boil.
‘Take those off. I intend to burn them. They reek worse than a dead demon’s asshole.’
‘You want me naked that bad, Farah? This is the last shirt I have.’
‘No, it’s not.’ She indicated her pallet bed and a neat stack of clothes—fresh elements of his usual uniform. ‘A shipment came in from Rome. I made sure to get you some.’
Jules tipped a brow. ‘The Vatican managed to spare us some funds, huh?’
‘Apparently, there’s an exorcist in Rome running about nearly nude.’
‘Poor thing. No seasonal winter wardrobe. It must be rough.’
‘Terribly.’
‘Just the silver spoon they were born with clacking between their teeth.’
‘Careful. You almost sound bitter.’
He laughed, tension easing from his shoulders. ‘I know what they do for us.’ He lifted up the shirt, rubbing his thumb over the Vatican seal pressed into each button. ‘But is it really so important we die branded as Vatican property?’
Farah’s lips quirked as she spooned coffee grounds into a filter, but she was too loyal to agree with more than her eyes.
The Vatican, where the cult of the Deathless God had crawled inside the bones of whatever came before, and the epicentre of the centuries-old assault by demons against God.
Whether you were a soldier in the mud, or an exorcist in Rome, you knew that two hundred years ago, God had intervened to defend the holy city and its people. With smoke blackening the sky and flames devouring the city, He had stepped forth in human form to fight for them. In a titanic battle at the heart of the old Vatican City, a demon had impaled Him, but not before God had delivered a killing blow of His own.
And so the Vatican had been chosen by God as the place His body would rest for eternity in a forever Deathless state.
Or so the dogma claimed.
The thick canvas walls billowed and an icy draught bit at his ankles. It wasn’t getting any warmer, so Jules pulled his shirt over his head to wash in the lukewarm water of her basin.
Jules felt Farah at his shoulder as she stepped up behind him. Rolling up her sleeves with the weight of ritual, she held her wrist against his, baring her kill scars.
He smiled at her reflection in the small mirror and angled his forearm so she could see his new row of marks. She read the silvery scars in his skin like words in a forgotten language. A language of their own making—telling the stories of demons he’d killed in each of the longer downward strokes.
Farah’s expression darkened. ‘So many,’ she said, meaning the horizontal lines that marked their dead.
For every demon he killed, they lost two or three of their own. Sometimes more.
Only he and Farah were left of those who marked kills in their flesh. Jules wasn’t sure how it started. All he knew was he couldn’t stop.
The luxuriant scent of coffee filled the tent, but Jules could still smell the promise of a violent storm. He pushed open the tent flap, crossing his arms over his bare chest as he leaned a shoulder against the post, staring over the tent city toward the forest. The front line stretched for a thousand miles in both directions. Maybe more. He didn’t really know. He was just a soldier. Beyond the trees, gathering clouds darkened the horizon.
Farah handed him a mug and he took it, his brows furrowing. ‘What is it?’ she asked.
‘I smell lightning.’
Farah arched a brow. ‘Are you a dog?’
He gave her an unamused look and she laughed.
Jules set down his untouched mug so he could yank on his shirt, his fingers clumsy as he transferred his metal collar buttons from the old—truly reeking, Farah was right about that—to the new. Unease coiled in his belly as he pulled on his jacket. The night had been quiet. He’d stayed awake throughout, waiting for an attack, but none had come. This disquiet was probably just the residual effects of exhaustion and starvation … And yet, he couldn’t relax.
‘Jules, eat something. That’s an order.’
‘Something’s not right—’
‘Sit down —’
The downpour roared like a monsoon, rain pelting their tent. Surprised shouts came from outside at the sudden, drenching rain. Tipping his head back, Jules stared at the tent roof, waiting. The hairs on his nape prickled at electricity in the air. ‘This isn’t right.’
Farah nodded grimly, reaching for her gun belt. Jules grabbed his sword, pulling it from its scabbard to count the sigils on the flat side. Vatican-forged, it would only survive fifty kills. One sigil for every ten, he had three sigils remaining. The other two, burned and blackened, marked his sword half spent.
It would have to do.
The Caspian Federation’s demon horde had arrived.