The Templar's Curse Read online

  Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  Sarwat Chadda is an award-winning author whose works have been published in a dozen languages. As well as novels he has also written tv shows, comic books and plays, ranging from Indian mythology to Star Wars. He has travelled widely in the Far and Middle East, but there’s no place like home, and home is London. There’s nothing he enjoys more than getting lost in its ancient paths and alleyways, and it’s on these streets that Billi SanGreal was born. Who needs fantasy worlds when you’ve a city like this? He shares this place with many other souls, but most of all he shares it with his wife and two daughters.

  Find out more on sarwatchadda.com and drop him a line on Twitter @sarwatchadda or Instagram @sarwat_chadda and click HERE to sign up for the Sarwat Chadda newsletter.

  Books by Sarwat Chadda

  THE TEMPLAR’S DAUGHTER

  THE TEMPLAR’S WITCH

  THE TEMPLAR’S CURSE

  THE TEMPLAR’S REVENGE (coming summer 2021)

  Copyright © Sarwat Chadda, 2021

  All rights reserved

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events and locations is entirely coincidental.

  Published by Chadda Books.

  To my wife and daughters

  The evil that men do lives after them.

  Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare

  CHAPTER ONE

  Billi sat in the lobby of the Ritz, arguably London’s most posh hotel, with her boots resting on the top of an 18th century Venetian coffee table, with a plastic Tesco shopping bag stuffed with two hundred thousand quid.

  She and the squires had spent all day counting it and shrink-wrapping it in bundles of five thousands at her kitchen table. They’d used only twenties, nobody but drug dealers used fifties, and while this deal could land her in prison for the rest of her adult life, she wasn’t here to buy drugs, but sand.

  Iraqi sand about six thousand years old. The most expensive in the world.

  Maybe she should have tried dressing up. Judging by the silent glares of the staff and guests she reckoned her boots broke the hotel’s dress code. And so did her biker jacket, the jeans and the black eye not quite hidden behind her shades.

  She winked slowly, testing the swelling. The skin was tight and pulsed hotly.

  Bloody Bors.

  Should never have happened. How could she have let Bors get a swing in? She usually danced around the lumbering oaf.

  That wasn’t the only big punch he’d landed. The one into her ribs had almost made her legs give out. Bors, despite his size, was quick and getting quicker. Not as quick as her, usually. The others watching had audibly gasped when he landed that one, a thunderous blow that had echoed within their training hall in the stony catacombs beneath Temple Church.

  Face it, you’re getting too old for this.

  Eighteen and already desperate to retire. Maybe that’s why she’d been given this errand. A simple shopping trip into the West End on a Friday night. Hand over the cash, grab the item and then be off to the Sergeant’s Arms for drinks with the others. They’d have her round waiting.

  No more school, ever. Most of her friends, or at least the people she’d known for the last however many years, were packing up for university, a brand new life far from home. Over the next few years they’d study and make those big decisions about what they would be, going forward. Billi already knew exactly what she was: A Poor Fellow Soldier of Christ and the Temple of Solomon. A Knight Templar.

  But what would it be like? Packing her bags, getting on her bike and just leaving? Starting somewhere brand new where she didn’t get funny looks for the bruises and the black eyes? Where she didn’t have to make excuses about why she would fall asleep in class because she’d been out all night hunting?

  No more sword-fighting. No more midnight hunts and no more infernals, loonies, spookies or ghuls. Let them be someone else’s problem, someone like Bors.

  What would it be like? She couldn’t even imagine.

  A shadow fell over her.

  “Excuse me, Miss. But can I help you?”

  The concierge wore a very smart suit, a nametag and a presumptuous manner. The wire-rimmed glasses came from another era, one where women were kept in their place and judging by his sneer, he clearly regretted having been born a hundred and fifty years too late.

  “Help me?” Billi smiled up at him. “I don’t think so.”

  “It’s just your attire is… inappropriate.”

  Billi looked up at him from over the top of her shades. “My ballgown’s in the wash.”

  “I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

  “I’m going to have to refuse,” she replied. “I’m waiting for someone.”

  “May I ask who?”

  Billi nodded. “You may… ask.”

  He frowned. “Well?”

  “You really don’t want to know.” Billi put on her most sincere smile. Truth was she didn’t really have one. She liked to think of it as her least threatening. “You really don’t.”

  Who did? Leave him to think he could go back home and get under his duvet with a hot-water bottle and never think about what lurked just outside the door. Of the monster that lived in the penthouse of this beautiful hotel.

  There was a little vein pulsing in his forehead. “Do you want me to call security?”

  What sort of question was that? “No.”

  “Listen to me, you little bitch. This is the Ritz, not your local crack house. So why don’t you just get your greasy arse off that sofa and — ”

  Billi stood up. She took off her shades so she could look him clear and straight in the eye. The man was merely doing his job, she supposed. Life would be much simpler if he let her do hers, unpleasant as it was. It was better for everyone.

  She put her hand gently on his shoulder. It was invading his personal space, it was violent, and yet gentle. He didn’t know what to do. So, he became afraid.

  It was strange to see how she affected people like that. She’d seen her dad do it but he was a guy of barely restrained violence and Billi had worked hard to be nothing like him. Nothing at all and yet there it was, the fear. The paleness and the sudden faintness of breath. She was just an eighteen-year-old girl who smelt of exhaust fumes and wasn’t big at all. She liked to think she had a friendly face, or at least an unassuming one.

  She wanted to be harmless. Not someone who made grown men piss themselves. That was not a particularly useful life skill.

  Though it explained why she, even now, didn’t have that many friends. All the more reason to hang onto the ones she did have. One in particular. Maybe that’s why she was distracted. Things weren’t going that smoothly on the relationship front. Turns out there wasn’t the ‘happily ever after’ once you got your fairy tale prince.

  Billi put her finger to her lips. “Shhh.”

  The concierge gulped.

  Her mobile started buzzing.

  About time.

  She glanced at the screen. The Royal Suite. Where else?

  She turned to the lift, leaving the man standing, and no doubt sighing with relief. This would all be over in ten minutes and she’d be gone and he’d have the Ritz exactly how he liked it.

  The lift was brass and glass and she joined a couple, an elderly woman in furs and pearls while her husband wore black tie with his little pot-belly straining against his scarlet cummerbund and had ‘works in insurance’ written all over him. They shuffled discreetly away from her into the corner. Billi sighed deeply as she watched the indicator ping upward, floor by floor. The pair departed, but not before a brief, wrinkle-nosed glance back at her. Maybe her leathers did have a little bit of a whiff…

  The doors slid open for the corridor leading to the Royal Suite. A guard waited for her.

  There was a brief look of surprise, no one had told him that he’d have to handle a scruffy young woman but these sorts of deals were well above his pay-grade.

  Ex-Special Forces? Or a government agency? Judging by the guy’s swollen biceps straining under his off-the-peg two piece she had to go with SEAL. There was something fishy about him.

  He walked her to the door but, before knocking, twi
rled his finger. “You know the drill.”

  American accent. SEAL for sure. “You try a grope and you’ll be getting an elbow in your face.”

  “What makes you think I’m interested in your skinny ass?”

  Bag down and arms outstretched, Billi let him do his job. He was quick and efficient and a moment later he had her frisked and found her knuckle dusters. “Silver? You find many werewolves in London?”

  “Not any more.” Billi felt an itch along her old scar. Once, and not that long ago, things had got pretty desperate with the werewolves. Once, not that long ago, she might have even become one. Still, no recent urges to chase cats or scoff down a bowl of Pedigree Chum.

  The guard put her dusters in his pocket.

  “I’ll want those back. They’re a family heirloom.”

  “Your granny work for the Peaky Blinders?” He rummaged around in the shopping bag, seemingly unimpressed by the bundles of cash, then handed the bag back. He opened the door. “Sir, your guest is here.”

  “Show her in, Tommy.”

  The guard nodded her through, then closed the door behind her, while he remained outside.

  The cool breeze drifted through the sitting room. The floor to ceiling windows overlooking Green Park were wide open and the room lit only by the lamp on the low coffee table before a lush, gold-embroidered sofa. The huge chandelier chimed gently and the room was filled with the perfume of orchids. Huge bouquets spilled from vases along the mantelpiece. But the smell, potent as it was, still did not hide the stench of rotten flesh.

  Flies buzzed around the table lamp and the man standing in the draught by the window. His suit hung loosely over his emaciated frame and he leaned upon an ebony cane.

  He took a deep breath and the air rattled in through his spindly chest.

  “Salaam alaikum, Ms. SanGreal. Come and join me. The view is lovely.”

  “Waa-alaikum salaam,” said Billi. “You’re looking well, Mr. Lawrence.”

  His laugh was more a hiss, and his thin body shook. Despite his feeble physique and immense age, his blue eyes shone, burned, with feverish vitality. He wasn’t going into his grave any time soon.

  The Ritz wasn’t tall, only eight storeys and the Royal Suite occupied two of the upper storeys, facing east and north. The top half was stepped back, giving the upper rooms their own balconies with which to enjoy the view over Green Park. There was one such balcony directly below her with a table set out. Some of the older, larger trees reached across to brush their leaves against the windows of the lower floors. Below was a narrow alleyway where diners ate under a canopy while keeping their toes tucked in from the motorbikes that used it as a shortcut. One such bike was parked up, its rider idly leaning against the railings. He seemed impatient, constantly checking his watch. Billi liked that. The best things were worth waiting for.

  Lawrence sat down on his sofa. “Your father’s not available?”

  “He is, but has better things to do with his time. You know how sensitive he is about… things.”

  “Things like me?”

  “Yeah. He might be tempted to test the limits of your immortality.”

  Lawrence straightened his cuffs. She was amazed he could wear the chunky Rolex on his brittle wrists and that gold ring on his finger, a snake clasping its own tail, was only checked by the large, arthritic knot of a finger knuckle. “Arthur is an unreasonable man.”

  “But a man of his word.” Billi sat down on the chair on the other side of the coffee table, putting her shopping bag upon it, beside a gleaming black-screen mobile phone. Nice to see that Lawrence, despite his age, was keeping up with modern technology. “It’s all there. Count it if you want.”

  “Why? If you can’t trust a Templar then who can you trust?”

  She hated this sort of banter. This unsubtle trading of barbs and faint witticisms, pretending not to know what each other was really up to. She knew exactly what Lawrence was, and what he did. And Lawrence knew all about her.

  Lawrence smiled. “Tea? The hotel does a most excellent selection of cakes.”

  “No.” She supposed as he was immortal, he wasn’t in a rush for anything, but she was. And the flies were getting on her nerves. “Where is it?”

  Lawrence tapped his cane on the marble floor.

  The side door opened and another guard-type entered, carrying a wooden box, roughly the size of a shoe box. She’d come for the box, but her attention was all on this new guard.

  He had, literally, a stony face. Minute cracks ran jagged paths across his cheeks, the unblinking eyes and the gap that was a mouth. Within the eye sockets glowed an eerie, pale blue light. His hands were likewise stone, grey, lifeless and dusty.

  “A golem? How did you get him through customs?” asked Billi. She’d never seen one, not for real. Read about them, of course. The ancient Hebrew sorcerers had created them from clay and magic. She could hear the soft hum of power reverberating from within.

  Lawrence smiled admiringly at his stone servant. “Through customs? Quite easily. Just packed him in a crate with a label on the front. Garden ornament.”

  The golem moved slowly, methodically, tempering his strength so as not to crush the box in his hands. He set it carefully down on the table between them.

  The box. This was it. She wiped her hands on her trousers. She needed to be calm and stop acting like an eight-year-old on Christmas morning.

  “May I look?” She hoped her voice didn’t tremble.

  Lawrence nodded. Not much, his neck couldn’t handle too much movement. The golem took a step back. Billi drew a pair of white cotton gloves from her pocket.

  The lid slid off and within was a container similar to an Egyptian canopic jar, made out of old bronze, rather than clay or stone, and nestled in with palm fibres as packing. It was about twenty centimetres tall and large enough to contain about half a litre. Patches of green patina covered the jar, but under that Billi could just make out regular rows of dashes and wedges. Cuneiform. Billi wasn’t an expert, but it looked like ancient Sumerian. She picked it up, it was much, much heavier than she’d expected. The lid was capped in lead engraved in Arabic, which she could read, they looked like the standard mystical warnings, and finally it was imprinted with of a six-pointed star.

  The Seal of Solomon.

  Was it just the lighting or did the seal briefly glow?

  Lawrence leaned closer and gestured with a talon-like forefinger. “It’s been authenticated. The jar was sealed by Mohammed ibn Nazir al-Hasan. That Arabic is in his own hand. You must have heard of him?”

  “The famous fakir of Baghdad. The guy was vizier to the caliph.” The metal was warm, more than that, it felt… alive. She could feel the pulse of a heartbeat coming from within. “So, who’s the guest?”

  “The cuneiform gives the name. Sarabda. He was known to the ancient Mesopotamians and popped up later in Assyria, he was briefly servant to King Ashurbanipal. Legend has it he turned the tide of the war against the Elamites. The Arabs mention him throughout the reign of caliph Haroun al-Rashid and that’s when our friend got himself caught and bottled up.”

  Billi smiled as she looked over the jar. This was exactly what she’d been told, but it was always worth checking. “My very own genie in a bottle.”

  “You know you can trust me when it comes to djinn,” said Lawrence, using the more traditional, Arabic term. “I’ve had plenty of experience.”

  “You’ve not thought to use him yourself?”

  “Wishes don’t work on wishes,” said Lawrence, not without bitterness.

  He looked even more ghoulish up close. The skin was paper thin and the veins beneath thick and grotesque. The folds were encrusted with dried blood, they tore so easily. How old was he now? They’d been dealing with him for over two centuries and he’d been old even then. She’d researched Lawrence through the Templar diaries, kept by every grandmaster since the very first, Hugues de Payens, when he’d established the Order back in the 12th century.

  They still fought the Battaille Tenebreuse, the dark conflict. It was their duty to fight the Unholy, the supernatural enemies that preyed upon humanity. Billi had battled vampires, werewolves, ancient witches, fallen angels but this was her first djinn. She wanted everything done right.