The Brothers Cabal (29 page)

Professor Stone contributed his spare hand and Horst found himself sliding backwards across the green swathe a little more rapidly. He was glad he'd already decided his current clothing was going for rags the first chance he had to change, as he shuddered to think how deeply the grass stains would run. It was the latest in a day of horrors.

‘When you say
oomph
,' huffed the major through his exertions, ‘do you mean to say…'

‘Blood,' said the professor, also starting to breathe heavily. ‘He means blood.'

Horst only raised a hand and waved a finger in the professor's direction.
Yes. That
.

‘Right,' said the major, and dropped Horst. While the professor was still at the ‘What the blazes?' stage, the major cut over him with ‘We'll never make it to the rendezvous going like this. We're not even outrunning the zombies, never mind those other …
things
. Professor, take the gun and run ahead. We'll catch you up.'

‘What hope have…' began the professor, then paused as he understood the plan. ‘Major, that's not wise. He is starving. He may not be able to control his need for sustenance.'

Part of Horst's mind also understood now. Unfortunately, it was the part that rubbed its hands at the realisation, and said,
Good-oh.

Hush, you
, said Horst inwardly.
I told you to clear off. It was very dramatic. Don't go undermining me by coming back and spoiling everything
.

‘We'll have to take that risk.'

‘No,' whispered Horst, ‘leave me. Don't risk yourselves.' But neither of them heard him.

There was little time for prevarication; a crash made the professor and major look to the town in time to see a creature of the proportions of a harvestman spider
*
expanded to a scale wherein its legs were as thick as any girder to be found in a Scottish shipyard crash through the wall of the town's general store. Screaming locals were noticeable by their absence, and both men saw with relief that the impromptu evacuation had been as near total as they could have hoped for.

‘Very well,' said the professor. ‘Good luck. Both of you.'

As the professor ran from them, Major Haskins lifted Horst into a sitting position like a man with an impracticably large ventriloquist doll. ‘Right, you can have a pint, and that's your lot,' he said.

‘I … may not be able to control it,' whispered Horst.

The major looked him in the eye. ‘Well, you better bloody had, Cabal. That's the long and short of it. Besides, I think you're a better man than to let whatever little voice bids you do evil call the shots for you.'

Wha…?
said Horst's evil little voice within him.
How did he know?

Shut up
, Horst said to it with his big inner voice.
I've told you. Clear off
.

I'll be back
, said the little voice, and it seemed to mean it. In any case, it grew quiet.

‘I'll control it,' Horst said out loud. ‘I'm my own man. One pint, no more.'

‘Righty-oh,' said the major without obvious enthusiasm. ‘Let's get this over with before we attract any attention.' He jerked down the side of his collar to expose his jugular, his expression that of long-suffering impatience.

Horst felt his fangs extend, but felt he couldn't just bite without some preamble. ‘This is terribly kind of you, Major—' he began.

‘
Do
crack along,' the major interrupted him. ‘I'm not inviting you to afternoon tea.'

‘No,' admitted Horst. ‘Quite.' And drove in his fangs.

‘Ow!' said the major tersely, but otherwise maintained a dignified silence while Horst fed.

One pint only
, Horst said to himself, although he wasn't quite sure how much that felt like. It had been a very long time since he had drunk a pint of beer, for example, or a pint of milk, and the experience of vampiric drinking was profoundly different anyway. Most people don't go around attaching themselves to kegs and udders by their canines, after all. Not
most
people.

Instead, Horst relied on the quantities he had learned to take that did not unduly inconvenience the donor during his year with the carnival. That situation had been different, though. He had been at liberty to feed frequently and lightly on patrons who would be expecting to come away from a carnival with a love bite or two in any case or they would regard it as a wasted evening. He had never starved before, but for the time he had endured several years in a crypt. Most of that time had been spent in a fog of inactivity when—day or night—he did not move for weeks on end, and had never had reason to exert himself. This whole fighting zombies, werewolves, and otherworldly creatures business was the most wearing thing he had ever done in his life and unlife, and so he had never before burnt his resources down to nothing.

‘Is that … that
must
be a pint?' he heard someone say nearby, but he decided to ignore them, whoever they were. Or, at least,
part
of him decided to ignore it, and the rest went along with it for a moment because the sensation of returning strength was so pleasurable, and anything was better than being a weak, doddering mess. But with strength, there also returned clarity, and this detected in the part of him that said that nobody had spoken a certain smugness that he had taken it at its word. That was enough to break the spell.

Horst lifted his head and wiped the blood from his lips. ‘Yes, Major Haskins,' he said, ‘I'm sure it must be. Thank you.'

Horst stood easily, his weakness fading from his memory almost as quickly as his body. The major followed him while tentatively touching his wounded neck. ‘Should I get some iodine on these?'

‘You can if you like, but from what I understand, a vampire's bite is very clean. My brother theorised that it was because all the bacteria you normally get in a human mouth can't survive, so a vampire's mouth is sterile. Other plus points are fresh breath and no plaque.' He pointed towards the line where he hoped the train had stopped, just out of view beyond a small wood. ‘We should get along, Major. They won't wait forever.'

He turned back just in time to see the major hit by the giant woodlouse thing. It smashed into him like a charging bull, jaws scissoring as it caught his arm and took it off in the middle of the biceps. Major Haskins cried out in startlement more than pain as he was borne down onto his back by the vast bulk of the creature. His cry was echoed distantly by Professor Stone, who was just climbing over the far fence when the disaster struck.

Horst did not hesitate, but flung himself at the louse, grabbing it under the near edge of the carapace and attempting to flip it. The louse really didn't care to be lifted, and a host of hook-ended feet thrust into the earth meant that usually it got its wish. The hook system, while efficient and effective, however, had never evolved to deal with the efforts of an impassioned vampire. With a grassy tear of ripping sod, the louse found itself on its back. It made a baying, chittering shriek at such indignity, which, while painful to the ear, didn't help it back onto its feet in the slightest. Instead it writhed on its back in the way known so well to its smaller, non-terrifying cousins.

Horst went to help Haskins, but hesitated when he saw the extent of his wounds. Not only had one arm been taken, but the creature's slicing mouthparts had done their work on his chest, too. The ribs were laid open, the broken ends of bone visible, and something pulsed in the cavity beyond that Horst feared was the major's exposed heart.

‘Cabal…' The major wheezed the words though the agony of his wrecked ribcage must have made even breathing desperately painful. ‘Cabal … take what … you need…'

‘I'll get the professor,' said Horst hopelessly. He looked over at Professor Stone. He had the sub-machine gun under the crook of his right arm, and his left hand to his mouth in shock. It hardly surprised Horst. Even from over there, the extent of the major's injuries must have been appallingly apparent. ‘I'll get help.'

Major Haskins managed a very exasperated sigh despite everything. ‘Don't be a damn … damn fool, lad. I'm … done for … My blood…' He held up his hands and they were dripping red. ‘Don't need it now. Be … be my guest.' He lolled back, his eyes dimming as he lapsed into shock.

Horst had a feeling, a sense of some bit of Miss Manners etiquette that he'd heard somewhere that it was rather discourteous to feed on people like that. On the other hand, he
had
been invited, and it would be rude to refuse. So he held Haskins close and reopened the so recently sealed wounds, all the while keeping an eye on the giant louse.

He was therefore looking in the right direction when a stream of grey-white fluid sprayed onto it from somewhere on high. The fluid behaved oddly, however; it had seemed liquid enough on impact, but now it flowed quickly and not entirely in the direction usually suggested by gravity. Instead it ran between body segments, and around legs, losing its wet gleam within moments to turn a dull matte. The louse certainly didn't like it. It squealed and flexed, scraping its legs in an effort to cast the stuff off, but only succeeding in gluing its legs together. Then, like a marionette whisked from the stage, it was gone, pulled into the air on the now very solid stream, up, up, into the waiting jaws of the great harvestman. It seemed the harvestman had more tricks up its many sleeves than merely being very big.

Horst stopped drinking and looked up awestruck as it looked down upon him, probably less awestruck. It watched him with the high disinterest of a hanging judge as it slowly crunched on the louse, bits of twitching chitin raining from its jaws, themselves devices of great complexity that dismantled as they manipulated as they chewed.

The louse lasted no time at all, and the harvestman's hunger was not assuaged. Before Horst could react, another jet of the grey web was arcing down from some gland mounted over the giant's jaws. Horst threw himself back, but he was not the target. The major was gone in a thrice, although a splash of the liquid settled upon Horst's ankles and might have drawn him up, too, but for the thinness of the strand connecting it to the main mass. Even so, his feet were off the floor before it snapped, dumping him on his back as the major, mercifully beyond sensation, met a swift end in the slashing mandibles of the harvestman.

Horst stared, horrified. The small voice that he usually ignored, however, was pointing out with increasing vigour that there is a lot less meat in a human than a giant woodlouse, and the harvestman had disposed of the latter in less than fifteen seconds. It would therefore take proportionately less time to deal with the major, at which point it would look for the next snack it could snag and masticate. As Horst was lying sprawled
right in front of it
this would not be a long search. Perhaps Horst might want to consider making life a little more problematical for the giant harvestman rather than just lying there like finger food?

Horst blurred into motion, and unblurred ten feet away in a spectacular forward roll that took him another fifteen. The resultant grass stains were
shocking
. The problem was his ankles were no longer quite as independent of one another as he—and they—were used to. The webbing, more like a great mass of pale grey rubber, had dried rapidly and was hobbling him as effectively as any pair of manacles. He tried tearing the stuff away, but it was flexible enough to require time he did not have to remove it and, worse still, the surface ruptured to reveal a still-wet web that his hand almost stuck to. Having two limbs glued was proving nuisance enough; if he ended up with a hand and both feet all joined together, it didn't entirely preclude the possibility of escape, but it certainly damned any hope of doing it with panache.

Instead, therefore, he tried hopping. This he could do neither efficiently nor stylishly. Instead, it only reminded him of the sack races he had competed in (and usually won) at primary school. It also had the effect of exciting the attention of the harvestman, which had started to make the odd head-bobbling movements that one associates with every predator from raptors through cats and so to mantises. These are movements that never presage well for the object of their attention, and Horst decided that a sack race without a sack was not the tactic that would save him. He tried bounding, instead, hands together, running as a dog might. A very slow dog.

‘Run, you fool!' he managed to shout at the professor. It was bad enough that he was going to die not only haplessly, but without dignity, and he surely didn't need an audience for it. The professor, stirred into action, turned and ran. That, at least, was something, Horst thought.

The highlight of Miss Virginia Montgomery's Flying Circus display was to have been a lot of quite cheap fireworks made more spectacular by being dumped from altitude from the underside of Miss Virginia's own trusty Copperhead. For the usual collections of yokels they performed for, this was something new and astonishing. It was certainly new and astonishing to the harvestman when a buzzy flying thing suddenly appeared before it and—while the monster's quite simple brain was deciding whether to catch and eat it rather than the funny hoppy thing with no panache—dumped a load of flashy, burning, popping, explodey things in its face.

The harvestman had never been so insulted, or surprised, or terrified. It backed away rapidly, backpedalling across the showground and so into the ruin of the general store, where it crouched within the remaining walls, making a touchingly futile attempt to hide.

The
Spirit of '76
meanwhile performed a hard bank and decelerated hard to come to a hover directly before Horst. The rear pilot canopy slid back and Miss Virginia leaned over the side. ‘Come on, for Christ's sake!' she shouted at him over the deep roar of the engine. ‘That was all the fireworks I had!'