A flash of heat seared her heart as Copia drifted into view. Disturbingly regal, the man didn’t seem to walk, but merely glide on top of the shadows flooding the room, more specter than man. He had never been a sight to behold, but today, cloaked in what she suspected was faux-morning, he had but two pinpricks of lightness about him: his pale blue eye and shining grucifix, both of which stood out like stars against the black sky of his regalia and paint. However brilliant it was to gaze upon, the hunter stiffened when the star in his eye socket shone on her.
Caroline’s chin lowered defensively, protecting her bared throat from his perverse gaze as if she was protecting it from the jaws of the Beast itself. Indeed, any person in this room seemed as likely to open their jaws to reveal the long, pointed maw of a demon as the next.
She was draped in finely stitched lace but, her cheeks still gaunt from a week of destitution, she looked like a corpse being bastardized one last time for public consumption. She glared up into his face with all the malice and mistrust of an unforgiving god. He was, in her considered opinion, the ultimate traitor to humanity. A lecherous excuse for a soul, destined to waste away in the tar pits of hell where his flesh could be boiled without end. For a moment, as their gazes held, it seemed the clocks had forgotten to keep moving. It was just her, Copia, and a corpse.
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The Cardinal regarded the audience with his hands out-stretched, gloved fingers poised as though each and every person there were puppets on invisible strings. His eyes flickered, possessed, then closed.
Dangerous. Some of them would want him dead after this. They were the foolish sort that underestimated him, however. They didn’t know, couldn’t see, that the very same dark power that flowed through the veins of his predecessors flowed through him, too: the blessed gift of the Dark Lord’s favour, the glorious mantle of being His eyes and ears on Earth. It was his. Cardinal Copia, who had spent far too many years being pushed around, sweeping up the drunken messes left behind by vainglorious men, being called vermin and sneered at unkindly …
Finally. Finally. The old wretch was gone and the chosen era could begin.
The Unholy moved in him. The giant plague rats, their eyes shining blood red, flooded down the walls like a swarm of flies. Some guests screamed and dove for cover, others watched blankly as the unexplainable occurred before their very eyes. As though led by one mind, one desire, the rats swarmed in patterns towards the raised platform that was now Copia’s stage. They crawled up pillars and statues, claiming anything and everything in his name.
Dark, sensual music played, feeding the red hot need of the congregation. Basking in the din, Copia spread his arms and gestured, inviting the attention of sisters waiting in the wings. Under the watchful gaze of their leader, Sister Imperator, the women prowled forth and held aloft a curtain to briefly shield the Cardinal from view.
By some unholy miracle, he reappeared not a few seconds later in full papal attire. The curtain was dropped. Their tugging hands disappeared. In the place of a cardinal was anti-religious royalty, a man near unrecognisable with the features of a rat skull painted onto his face. His robes glittered spectacularly with astral light, certainly the most lavish and decadent attire seen on a Papa yet. Bronze bones on his gloved hands served as an eternal reminder that this was one that turned flowers to dust, stars to darkness, god to myth.
Sister Imperator came forth through the lascivious wilds. Copia dropped down onto his knees, drawing his hands together in prayer, and as he was crowned with the spectacular, glittering mitre, his cursed eyes opened once more.
He smiled.
In his mind, there could be no objection. No demonic men seeking violence against him, no crowd reeling from the shock of seeing Papa Nihil carted away so quickly. They would see only the dark beauty of Papa Emeritus IV and have no choice but to despair in their lesser states, to worship at his very feet, to want nothing more than to kiss his hands. Entrenched in triumph, the new Papa rose to his feet and took a bronze thurible from a sister, holding it aloft so that the sweet perfume might cleanse the lingering stench of the past.
At a thought, he searched for Caroline in the audience, wondering if - hoping - he might find the beginnings of admiration in her gaze.
