The Brothers Cabal (16 page)

The two of them rolled away from the lycanthrope's stricken victim—and he
was
most definitely stricken. Horst could smell the blood, could taste arterial spray in the air, and his hunger flared up in tongues of ice that froze his beleaguered soul. Happily, the subject of his violence seemed to deserve it. As their tumble ended in them rolling apart, both combatants were on their feet in a moment, facing one another and ready to fight.

‘Oh, you're kidding me,' said Horst, taken aback and a little underwhelmed. It was hard not to be dismissive. ‘A bloody
werebadger
? Really?' While he appreciated that the European badger is a short-tempered creature and not to be trifled with, encountering a stripy-faced renegade from a brutalist interpretation of
The Wind in the Willows
somehow failed to communicate the supernatural menace a werewolf, werebear, or even a were–cocker spaniel might have brought to the occasion.
*

‘Die!' growled the creature in a strangulated croak that did nothing to raise its stock. ‘Die in the name of Lord Devlin!' It rushed Horst, but he danced aside easily.

‘How does anyone even get to be a werebadger?' he inquired with the most polite curiosity. ‘Did your father have some sort of romantic interlude with a very pretty lady badger one night?' The badger's eyes widened with fury as it turned to face him again. ‘He did? What a card. I can only imagine how romantic a sett is by moonlight.' The creature charged again, this time making an asthmatic sort of roar as it passed by Horst, who once again dodged. ‘Now, now. No need to be like that. I'm just trying to understand how you ended up being so ridiculous.'

The first two failed passes had made Horst overconfident, however, and it transpired that being cocky with a werebadger is a tactical error. The badger stopped short and swung hard, one heavy claw looming up and out of the shadows so quickly that it caught Horst before he was even aware of it. It cracked into the side of his skull, and he was knocked from his feet by the vast violence of the blow, spinning along the length of his body in a graceless pirouette before crashing to the ground by the dying messenger.

Horst had felt his cheekbone break under the impact. Where once upon a time, his first thought would have been ‘Not the face!' now a need for vengeance arose in him as urgent as hunger. No half human was going to get the better of him like this. No mongrel thing would crow and swagger over his defeat. Especially not a bastard demi-badger.

Before him was the messenger, staring up into the night sky, his throat lying open and awareness leaving his eyes. Already deep in shock, it was obvious he would be dead in a minute or so. Horst watched blood arc in a small fountain from the damaged but not severed carotid artery, and felt his fangs extend. No time for that, however. He glanced over the dying man's body and noted the ex-military webbing belt, laden with pouches, knife scabbard, and an empty holster. Behind him, he heard the badger lumbering forward. Horst sucked down the pain—not nearly as agonising as it should have been—of his shattered cheek, and moved.

He left the ground feetfirst, thrust back by his arms, a moment in the air, and then his feet set down, and he whirled to face his foe, staying low and balanced, his arms outstretched. They scythed through the air, passing close by the werebadger's face. It started to shy away, but then flinched and stopped moving altogether as Horst settled into a combative crouch. Then the badger stepped back, gripping its throat. Horst held up his right hand. It contained the broad-bladed fighting knife he had found in the messenger's belt. There was blood across the first three inches of it, the same blood that was pulsing thickly over the badger's claws.

‘I think you're about done for,' said Horst. His voice was harsh and dangerous, and he barely recognised it himself.

The badger turned, made to stagger away, but Horst was on it in a second. He drove it to the ground, pushed its arms aside, and, jaws agape, fastened himself onto the creature's opened throat. As the Dee Society members watched in varying degrees of horror and relief, Horst fed on the dying lycanthrope until its heart faltered and failed.

When he was finished, he rose and faced the mortals. He could see the fear and the loathing in their faces, except for Alisha's. She was unreadable. When she said, ‘Well. That was efficient,' he had no idea whether it was a compliment or an irony.

Efficient?
He looked back at the creature, but it was a monster no longer. The corpse of a man lay there, minding Horst of a young farmer with dark hair cut short and ill-advised sideburns. ‘I've never killed before,' he said.

‘What?' It was the brusque tones of the military man. ‘Never? I thought you were supposed to be the Lord of the Dead?'

Horst turned on him, rage billowing in his chest. ‘I have never killed before!' he snarled into the man's face. He was aware his face was covered in blood, he could see his reflection in the man's eyes. It made him feel good in that moment, because that was what he was—a bloodthirsty monster—and these little people had better start understanding that. ‘They didn't discuss the job title with me.' Horst stepped back, collaring the rage and putting it away for when it might do some good. He was breathing heavily, with anger, with exertion, with the glorious feeling of new blood to burn. He said it once more, quietly.

‘I have never killed before.'

The older man edged past him and knelt by the messenger. He didn't need to check for life; the wounded carotid was no longer pulsing out blood. ‘Poor Redmond's had it, I'm afraid.'

The military man muttered a heartfelt oath, then said, ‘Deny him.'

In response, the older man fumbled at the webbing belt that seemed to be the one piece of standard equipment among their force, and withdrew a small test tube from a pouch. Horst was irresistibly reminded of his brother's proclivity for carrying elements of his laboratory around with him as he watched the man remove the tube's cork and sprinkle the contents over the body of the hapless Redmond. It was a crystalline powder, but certainly a mixture as Horst could see harsh metallic glints within it.

‘What's that in aid of?' asked Horst. The man didn't answer but rose and stepped back as the powder combusted, quietly and unspectacularly, like a diffident flambé in a shy restaurant. Horst opened his mouth, then closed it again as he didn't know what to say about this. He especially didn't know what to say about how Redmond burned away almost silently in strange, cold, golden flames.

‘Poor Redmond,' said the older man, putting away the empty tube.

‘At least we've made sure he rests,' answered the military man grimly. He looked at Horst a little suspiciously. ‘You don't have many friends, do you?'

‘Not around here,' Horst admitted. ‘My social skills seem to have suffered.'

He noticed the man's eyes were regarding the corpse of the demi-badger. ‘We seem to be in this together,' he said. ‘We'll worry about your motivations later. Come on.' He hefted his pistol up to a ready position and headed out into the night. They filed out past Horst, the younger man avoiding looking at him. The last out was Alisha.

‘Sorry about the thing with the lungs,' she said, and then she was gone into the night.

Horst was suddenly very aware of the poor state of his attire, the blood on his face, the crushed cheekbone. At least he could do something about the latter. With an effort of concentration and through the agency of the werebadger's blood, he re-formed the bone, knitting together the splinters and resetting it amid a muffled series of clicks and pops. Wincing slightly at the mild soreness with which it left him, he followed the others.

It seemed that the badger had been the furthest end of a picket line following a stagger or lurch or whatever the collective noun is for a group of zombies. Certainly, the action appeared to have passed them by, and was now close to the far side of the common away from the riverbank. There was some desultory gunfire from that direction that died away as Horst and his group headed away, parallel to the riverbank where Horst had come ashore. They would meet the river again, he knew, as it turned away from the mountains, and he hoped that the Dee Society people had a plan that didn't involve swimming.

They seemed to. The military man, who did indeed turn out to be a major, or a former major, led them in Indian file through the dense undergrowth along a path that he had blazed earlier. From the far side of the common, the shooting had died out altogether. After a silence of almost a minute, there was a single shot. The young man paused to look back as if anything would be visible to him beyond the walls of briars and the darkness, but Alisha pushed him on impatiently.

When they reached the edge of the overgrown field, they found themselves facing a swathe of open land some fifty yards wide with a dirt track running alongside the river. ‘They'll be clearing the common now,' said the major, terse and direct. ‘The changers will play bloodhound. They'll find our dugout, and then they'll find our path. We have perhaps ten minutes before they catch us.' Horst started to comment that this wasn't much of a plan, but the major held up a hand. ‘We shall be beyond their reach in five. Follow me.'

He did not make for the path, but instead skirted the edge of the overgrown common, until they saw ahead of them where the dirt path joined a road that led to a wooden bridge. On the far side was what looked to be a derelict farm. Abandoning the cover of the bushes, the major led them in a run across the open swathe in a direct line for the bridge. They were still some yards from it when behind them, a howl of pure animalistic rage split the night. In seconds it was joined by others.

‘They've found their striped friend,' said the major. ‘And there I was thinking ten minutes was pessimistic. Run! Run for your lives!'

 

Chapter 7

IN WHICH THERE ARE EXPLOSIVES AND ACID

The boards amplified their running footsteps up to a rumbling thunder so loud that, to their ears, it might as well be a public address announcement that this was their escape route and that any otherwise unengaged werewolves or zombies should make their way to the bridge, where they would find an opportunity to rend and tear mortal flesh.

Unhappily, in this they were essentially correct. The running Dee Society members and Horst—who was running at a determinedly human speed to demonstrate solidarity—were barely halfway across the bridge when the first of the lycanthropes broke cover from the undergrowth and headed straight for them.

Alisha skidded to a halt, unslinging the satchel from her shoulder. ‘Keep going!' she shouted at the others, and they did. Not Horst, however, who, being the Lord of the Dead and not a dues-paying member of the society, considered himself a free agent.

He watched as she took a knee right in the middle of the bridge, opened the satchel's flap, and fussed with its contents. Horst thought it an odd sort of time to go rummaging through her handbag, but kept his counsel, which was wise as he would have looked a terrible idiot if he'd said as much. Alisha looked quickly through a handful of odd metallic pencil-shaped objects, dismissed them as redundant, and dropped them into her jacket pocket. ‘Too slow,' he heard her mutter.

The wolf had almost reached the end of the bridge. Horst was just wondering if he should dash over and have a word with it when there was a loud percussion next to him. The wolf went down screaming. Alisha carefully placed her still-smoking pistol, doubtless loaded with silver bullets, within easy reach and carried on tinkering with the inside of the bag. Horst gave its innards a curious glance and noted that it seemed to be filled with blocks that reminded him of how tea arrived from the grocers back in the halcyon days when he drank tea. Alisha had stuck some sort of device into the side of one of the blocks and what they actually were occurred to him at about the same time she pulled on a cord and a fuse spluttered into coruscating life. She snatched up her pistol and headed off at full pelt after her companions. Horst let her go, watching the fuse crackle angrily as the sparks crept towards the detonator. It was November the fifth all over again, again. Whether her cry of ‘Well? Run, you idiot!' was entirely necessary was another thing. In any event, Horst was running easily alongside her in a moment.

‘That's quite a short fuse, isn't it?' he asked. Behind them, a mixed mass of undead and lycanthropic ill intent was surging onto the bridge. ‘Pardon me.'

And so saying, he picked her up, slung her over his shoulder, and accelerated as hard as he dared with a living passenger. He was still a good twenty feet from the far bank when he felt the boards of the bridge beneath his feet ripple and, knowing what it forewarned, threw himself forward. The blast wave rolled across them and seemed to carry them along on its raging front like flotsam on the surf. He was surprised intellectually but not viscerally when they landed on the rough earth of the farmer's track at the far end of the bridge. They tumbled head over heels as the bridge was torn to pieces by the angry impact of four blocks of plastic explosive turning largely to gas in a ball of heat and fury. The night sky glowed as the wood of the bridge spontaneously combusted beneath the violence of chemistry.