Devil's Kiss

KILLING HIM SHOULD BE EASY; HE'S ONLY SIX.

Then why the bilious, twisting feeling deep in her guts? Why the cold, clammy dampness down her back?

He's only six.

Billi waded through the spiny grass toward the back of the park. The autumnal night wind whispered to her, down here in The Pit.

What a name for a playground.

But no one played here; hadn't for years. The low fence around it had long since fallen, leaving rotten planks jutting out of the earth like crooked black teeth. The animal rockers watched her with hollow eyes, and their old springs creaked as they nodded their heads in greeting.

The boy sat on the swing, the middle one of three.

Only six.

Billi approached with a flashlight in her hand, its beam aided by the full moon and the red lights on the Crystal Palace radio aerial. It loomed over her like a giant black spike stabbing the sky.

The rusty chains groaned as he swayed back and forth, watching her.

Maybe it's not him. Maybe he's just some normal kid.

Maybe I don't have to murder him.

He looked normal. Tatty Nike trainers, a pair of jeans with an elastic waist, and a blue and burgundy Crystal Palace top.

A local boy.

Normal, except for the marks on his neck. His white throat was circled with dark purple bruises.

Billi drew a deep breath and crossed over the old fence boundary, her heart hammering hard against her ribs. The gravel playground was scattered with litter: old cans, moldy newspapers, and brittle brown leaves that had blown down from the skeletal trees at the top of the hill. But the corruption was more than just gentle aging. All the signs were here.

Of a desolation: a place of evil. Innocent blood had been spilled, tainting the soil itself. Billi thought, if she dared to listen, she might still hear dying screams echoing in the wind, and the leaves rustling with a child's last breath. The earth seeped with a sweet oily vapor. It tinged the air, but as Billi passed the threshold it doubled in thickness, until after a few steps her lungs felt as if they were drowning in it. The few flowers and weeds that had broken through the gravel were gray and malformed. Glossy black beetles scuttled their armored bodies over the stones, and fat white luminescent worms writhed under her feet.

"Hello," said the boy.

"Hello," said Billi.

The boy looked at her. He was missing a lower front tooth, but otherwise his baby teeth formed a soft, easy smile.

Just like the photo.

I could still be wrong.

But with each step closer, she knew she wasn't. It was the bruises.

Billi stopped a few feet in front of him. The marks still held the impressions of fingers, even after all this time.

"Have you come to play?" he asked.

Look into his eyes. That's what they'd told her. Wasn't it one of the first lessons she'd learned in the Order? The windows of the soul. She'd often stared at her own black orbs, wondering what really lay behind them. Maybe only more darkness.

The boy got off the swing, and Billi stepped backward;

she couldn't help it.

He looked up at her, catching the moon full on his plump, gap-toothed face. His eyes shone like mirrors, like a cat's eyes. Billi pulled off her hood and tucked a loose black lock behind her ear. She was tall for fifteen, and Alex was small for six, so she squatted down to his level, her boots creaking. She gazed into the boy's eyes, looking for something real, something alive.

But there was nothing. Just an empty reflection.

It's him.

"I'm sorry, Alex. I've come to take you back."

"How do you know my name?"

What didn't she know about him? She'd read the old newspapers, trawled through the library archives for a week. Even watched the faded eight-millimeter home movie, a flickering yellow-tinged illusion of life on a white bedsheet.

Alexander Weeks. Six years old. No. 25 Bartholomew Street. Pupil at St. Christopher's Primary School. Brother to Penny.

Last seen in 1970.

"But I just got here. I want to see my mummy."

Only son of Jennifer and Paul Weeks. Billi remembered them sitting with her dad in the church, showing him their >old photo album. Telling him how they still dreamed of Alex even now. How some nights they saw his face outside their window.

"I know you do. But you can't stay here."

She'd argued she was only fifteen, a year below age. But her dad had insisted. It was time. The Ordeal. Her last test before she was initiated into the Order.

And no one argued with Arthur SanGreal.

She'd always expected her Ordeal to be a Hot Meet. A fight, lots of sound and fury. Why else all those years practicing sword fighting with Percy? She was finally ready for a duel against one of the real Unholy. A loony, fang-face, even an infernal, maybe. Like a real warrior.

Not this.

Not killing a little kid.

Alex took another step. "Why? It's not fair!"

The swings on either side of him rattled on their chains, agitated. Billi tensed. Goose bumps crept along her arms, even under her fleece. Alex radiated coldness.

"I know, son."

Billi spun around.

Her father strode over the broken fence and walked toward them. A flash of anger shot through her. He'd promised just to watch, not intervene. Maybe he didn't think she could do it.

Billi glanced at the boy she was about to kill, sitting small and scared on the swing.

Maybe her dad was right.

Arthur was wearing his suit, his one and only suit. Dark blue and shiny from use, the stitches strained against his compact and muscular frame. In his left hand he held a scabbard, in his right, a sword. Three and a half feet long, its pommel was a thick iron disk bearing the Order's symbol: two knights on a single horse. The broad blade gleamed

ghost-silver in the moonlight. It was a brutal weapon made for hacking.

The boy looked at him. "Have you come to kill me too?"

Arthur stopped halfway between them and the fence and discarded the scabbard. His pale face broke into a smile, but it was thin and half hidden in his black beard. And there was no gentleness in his icy blue eyes.

"No, lad. You know I can't." He glanced at Billi. "You're already dead."

"It's not fair!" The swings were thrashing and clanging now, and the merry-go-round creaked to life, turning slowly, grinding its rusty axle against its corroded socket.

"The man said I could feed the birds! The man said—"

"He's been punished for what he did," said Arthur.

"Is he in Hell?" asked Alex.

"I promise you he is." Arthur's knuckles turned white as they tightened around the sword hilt.

The boy wailed. "I didn't want to die!" He held up his hands. "Please, let me stay." Crystal tears dribbled down his face, and his mouth and chin wrinkled in misery. "It's dark and I'm all alone! It's dark and I'm scared!" He stepped nearer, begging.

He's just a little boy. . . .

"No, Billi!" shouted Arthur, but too late. Billi dropped to her knees and embraced Alex. She pulled him close to her heart and—

the chill seeps into her pores, saturating her skin with ice. Like venom, black ichor floods her veins, pumping her with Alex's despair, envy, and

HATE

that he was snatched from the sunlight by sweaty hands and crushing fingers, in the dirt and fallen leaves, never to feel the

WARMTH

he misses so much and wants more than anything, and so he sucks it from her, leaving only coldness that is brittle and bonedeep, the air out of her lungs white frost, and her

FLESH

blisters, and tears freeze on her cheeks, and she stares into Alex's eyes, black and malice-filled, remembering only the

AGONY

that he cannot forget, and it eats him, an abysmal virus that he can't contain, so she must

SUFFER

like he did, and the cold burns her heart as he infests her with his darkness, burrowing deeper and—

Powerful fingers dug into Billi's shoulders and ripped her free. Arthur tossed her away from the boy, and she tumbled to the gravel, slamming down hard on her cheek. She was frozen, her body trembling with the deep chill.

Possession. It had tried to possess her. It wasn't Alex. Not anymore. She tried to stand, but her legs wouldn't bend; they felt as brittle as icicles.

"Billi!" shouted Arthur.

There was a loud crack as the wooden swing seat broke apart, and the two loose chains lashed out. Billi ducked as one whipped out above her, but Arthur took a blow across his forehead. The sword flew away, he stumbled, then was lifted off the ground as the chain wrapped itself around his neck and tightened.

Arthur dangled from the swing's A-frame: a perverse playground gallows. He clawed at the noose, his face turning deep red.

"Let him go!" screamed Billi. She bent forward, hoisting herself onto her feet, legs quivering like spaghetti.

But Alex wasn't listening. There was a black, savage fire inside him, and he freed a bestial howl as her dad dangled on the end of the chain. The cry sliced Billi's skin like daggers.

Alex could never have made a sound like that. No child could.

The sword stood between them, point buried into the ground, upright like a steel crucifix.

"Please, Alex!" Billi begged. Arthur's hands dropped, and he went limp.

But Alex, or the thing pretending to be a living boy, just laughed and waved his arms, a mad puppeteer with her dad's heavy body as his doll.

Billi charged, ripping the sword free in a shower of dirt and insects. Alex turned, and she kicked him in his chest, knocking him over.

Grip reversed, she held the sword above him, tip pointed down.

"God forgive me," she whispered, plunging the blade into the child's heart.

The shriek tore the sky apart, and Billi shuddered, but her fingers tightened around the wire-bound sword hilt. Black bile erupted from the wound, alive almost, saturating her clothes and face. She choked as droplets of ectoplasm splashed into her mouth and down her throat.

She drove the sword deeper, pinning Alex to the earth. Leaning onto the pommel, she fumbled in her pocket with one hand and pulled out a small silver bottle. Her sweaty fingers wouldn't open the stopper, so she bit it off. Then she smeared the clear oil onto her fingers.

Alex stared, eyes huge, as Billi tossed the empty bottle away. She released the sword and dropped to her knees beside him.

"No, Billi! Please! I don't want to go!" He punched and screamed and scratched as she tried to hold his head still enough to mark it with the cross. He pulled her black hair and spat out stinking oily gore.

"Exorcizo te, omnis spiritus immunde, in nomine Dei Patris omnipotenti," she intoned. Locking his head still with her left hand, Billi pressed her first two right fingers on his forehead, then chin, and finally both cheeks.

"Please, Billi. Let me stay. Just a little longer," he whimpered.

Billi tried to ignore the desperation in Alex's voice. She had to finish this. "Ego to linio oleo salutis in Christo Jesu Domino nostro, ut habeas vitam aeternam!"

Billi leaped away as Alex's body spasmed. Bile poured out of his eyes, nostrils, ears, mouth—great jets of bubbling noxious fluid that filled the air with the stink of brutal death. Alex's cries weakened as the outpouring diminished, his body eroding before her.

"What have you done?" he hissed, eyes blazing with demonic madness.

"Deus vult," Billi whispered. It was the Order's battle cry, but right now it seemed more like a curse.

God wills it.

He gave a final scream, then the last of Alex faded away.

A pale outline lingered for a moment before, in the sigh of a breeze, it disappeared. Billi stared at the empty spot. Only a black stain remained, and a vile odor. She pressed her hands against her face.

I killed him.

She'd passed the Ordeal; she should be elated. She'd trained so long and hard for this.

Instead she felt sick and hollow.

Arthur crashed to the ground, free from the now lifeless chains. He shook with a dry rasping cough, then slowly rose to his feet. He stumbled over and stood beside her, inspecting the dark outline.

"Well done. A clean kill," he croaked, rubbing his bruised neck. Then he saw her covered in slimy gore.

"Figuratively speaking."

He wrapped his fingers around his sword and worked it back and forth until it came free. He wiped the blade with an old rag, inspecting the edge inch by inch for any new nicks or cracks. Finally he nodded with satisfaction and, on retrieving the scabbard, slipped the weapon in.

"How was school?" he said.

"What?"

"School. You did go, didn't you?"

"School? How can you talk about school after what I've just done!"

"Done? What you've done is free a tortured soul.

Whatever it looked like, whatever it said, that was not Alex Weeks. It was a spirit of pain feeding on the agonies this place has absorbed. Nothing more than a corrupt afterimage of that poor boy's last moments." He glanced at the broken swings. "The dead should not linger."

The ground swayed as she stood, and her guts churned. She sucked in the cold night air, but something putrid bubbled in her stomach. Arthur put his hand awkwardly on her shoulder. "How d'you feel?"

She wanted to laugh. She stumbled toward the boundary, clutching her belly. The ectoplasm writhed inside her like serpents, slithering up her throat.

"I feel—"

She dropped to her knees and puked. It was black. Her body buckled under each discharge. Arthur squatted down beside her and drew out a crinkled packet of cigarettes. "Yes, it was the same for me the first time." He lit one. "Welcome to the Knights Templar."