The Templar's Curse by Sarwat Chadda (classic books to read TXT) 📕

rid of you. What all this says to me is a desperate, last ditch attempt to hang on by your dirty fingernails.”

“No one cares what you think.” But he was angry now, cracking. Billi decided to prod a little harder and see what might break through.

“So what have you done with all those extra years, Reggie? Found the cure for cancer? Brought world peace? Learnt how to knit and garden? Surely with all this life you must have achieved something? Come on, don’t be modest. Tell me how rich your life is, what marvels you’ve beheld, peering through the eyes of others.”

“Shut up. Shut up or I’ll —”

“Don’t tell me it’s all been a waste, Reggie. Surely not. Or is that the problem? You spend all your time trying to extend your life, and forget to live it. Not like Erin. Look at what she’s done already. Look at the good she’s done. Kinda puts your century to shame, doesn’t it?” Billi got to work as she talked, as she taunted. The boot didn’t give her much space but she tucked her knees up to her chin and began wriggling her wrists down her back, under her bum… “Her friends love her. They’d do anything for her. That’s how life should be lived. Surrounded by love, by people who care for you, and you care for them. I’ve only been part of that for a short while but I’ve felt it. Erin’s very special and that’s because she’s suffered, and found the strength to come out the other side. Despite your attempts to break her. You try and try but she fights back. I think she’s gonna win and then where will you be? Is there a place in Hell waiting for you? I reckon there must be.”

“She is not strong! She is a weak, pathetic little girl! I’m in charge and she is nothing without me!”

Billi’s wrists slipped under her feet and suddenly she had her hands in front of her. She picked the ice scraper out. The edge might just cut through the plastic ties. Gripping it between her knees she began rubbing the wrist ties against its edge. “You’ve got that backwards. You’re nothing without her. That’s the life of a leech.” Billi laughed. “And you think you were one of the Ouroboros Society? The others must have laughed at your feeble attempts at immortality.”

“There, girl, is where you know nothing. I was one of the select. Part of the inner circle.”

She needed to keep him talking, distracted while she worked to free herself. “So what did you discover out there in the desert?”

“Secrets. The secrets hidden from mortal eyes for almost five thousand years. I found the ritual called the Vessel of the Anunnaki.”

“But there was something wrong with it, wasn’t there?”

“Clever, clever girl. Yes. It’s a common problem with archaeology. You very rarely find anything it its complete and original state. The tablet with the ritual upon it was badly broken. I managed to assemble most of it. Enough to understand it allowed, at the moment of death, to transfer your soul into another’s body, a blood relative. Another vessel as it were. That’s how the ancient Mesopotamians viewed the body. A vessel that contained the immortal soul. It is the element of animation, of life.”

She wasn’t getting anywhere with the scraper. She needed a sharper edge. Now her eyes were used to the darkness, she had a better look. There had to be something. “So you performed the ritual? Knowing you would violate the body of your own son? Is that the point you realised you were a sociopathic bastard?”

“Morals matter little when dealing with the occult. I had tried my best to train Edward, but he was a disappointment as a boy, and a failure as a man. I preformed the ritual, and left my original body. It’s a terrifying thing, Billi, drifting on the seas of eternity. There are predators in those bottomless, dark depths.”

“Then what? You landed in Edward’s body? How did he feel about it? Happy to share with his dear old dad, was he?”

Reggie huffed with frustration. “That shouldn’t have happened. His soul was meant to have been devoured by the Anunnaki. I was meant to enter an empty vessel. I realised the ritual I’d performed was incomplete. We fought for years, but he was stubborn. In the end I realised the fight was futile, so I forced him to throw himself in the river and try my luck with Simon. But each transfer was harder than the last. My hold on Simon was tenuous and I was relegated to a shadow at the back of his mind, barely present at all.”

“Then something happened during the Iraq War, didn’t it? Simon found something.”

Reggie laughed. “Yes! Yes he did! He found a tablet with the complete, perfect ritual! Once performed it I would be able to push out the soul of the vessel I was entering! Feed it to my patrons, an offering, to the Anunnaki.”

“But Simon guessed you were there, didn’t he? In the back of his mind?”

Reggie didn’t answer. Billi wondered if she’d pushed him too hard. Then she heard him sigh. “Yes. He’d studied the old legends himself. I suppose by now it had become a family tradition. He also found letters written by his father, hinting at my presence. Simon was open-minded enough to recognise the truth of those letters, especially as they seemed to confirm his own issues. He realised he was not psychotic, the usual diagnosis when you hear strange voices in your head. He recognised the voice was mine. I sensed his growing resistance. He hid away the tablet, and arranged for his wife to destroy them. He did not trust himself to do it because he guessed, rightly, I would try and seize control. Then he killed himself, hoping to drag me down with him. I was lucky to escape, and joined with Erin when she was ten. The transfer was hard