The Brothers Cabal (32 page)

‘There should be three.'

‘What?' Horst picked up a bundle of soft cloth from the corner and unwrapped it. Within was a rolled-up shoulder holster, a semi-automatic pistol secured within it. ‘Not a Webley?' he said in mock outrage. ‘They'll be so upset when they hear that you've been seeing other gunsmiths.'

‘Don't flaunt your ignorance, Horst. It
is
a Webley. It holds eight .38 rounds and, as the man in the shop assured me, has decent stopping power. I have decided to start carrying one as a matter of course.'

‘What about that big fat revolver you normally use?'

‘I shall, of course, continue to carry a Boxer .577 in my bag. Bring that, too. Oh, and the two boxes of ammunition, and the cleaning kit, please.'

‘Johannes, there are two .577 revolvers here.'

‘They're both the same. Just bring me one.'

‘That's not what I mean. I mean, you're bulk buying handguns. What does that say about your lifestyle?'

‘It says I'm prudent and farsighted.'

‘That's not all it says.' Horst put one of the gun boxes on the chest of drawers, stacking a box of .577 and a box of .38 ACP ammunition on it, and then topped the pile with the automatic pistol and holster rewrapped in its cloth to form a convenient load. He picked them up together and turned to Cabal. ‘May I ask what happened to your last revolver?'

‘It turned into a sword.'

‘Of course it did.'

‘And then the ghouls probably stole it.' Cabal smiled with an expression so close to fondness that it made Horst stare. ‘The naughty rapscallions.'

*   *   *

Johannes Cabal fairly creaked around the house as he performed his toilette and gathered his necessities. Both were routines he performed efficiently and as quickly as his slightly atrophied musculature would allow. But while the former was a necessity attended to grudgingly, the latter was something in which he took some pleasure.

The small suitcase, taken from the hallway cupboard beneath the stairs, was wiped down and divested of dust and dead spiders, before Horst set about filling it with assorted items of clothing in black and white (the slippers could stay in the house, he decided). Cabal, however, took himself up into the attic laboratory, recovered a retired but serviceable Gladstone bag from beneath his workbench, and started to fill it with the accoutrements of an ungentlemanly necromancer. A standardised notebook,
*
a roll of cloth containing pockets in which nestled assorted surgical instruments, a small padded box of about the dimensions required to hold a pair of opera glasses yet which actually contained several sealed test tubes in which liquids and powders of strange creation and composition flowed, the two boxes of ammunition now lightened by several rounds, and—freshly emerged from its packaging, cleaned, and loaded—a Webley Boxer pistol of outrageous calibre.

In a little over an hour he was almost ready. He dropped a switchblade knife into his jacket pocket, took a cane topped with a silver skull from the umbrella stand in the hall, slid blue-glass spectacles equipped with side-baffles into his breast pocket, and took down a slouch-brimmed black hat from the cloak rack.

As he brushed the thin layer of dust that had settled upon it during his absence and his recuperation, he said to Horst, ‘I wore this hat to Hell.' He held the hat up to his nose and inhaled. ‘Still faintly redolent of brimstone. That smell gets everywhere.'

Horst, waiting by the door with the packed suitcase, said, ‘When a normal person uses a phrase like they wore a hat to Hell, one naturally assumes they just wore it a lot.'

Cabal smiled slightly and donned the hat. ‘Are you suggesting I'm not normal, O brother mine?'

‘You'd be outraged if anyone ever called you normal, O odd sibling. Come on. Our ride should be along soon.'

They stepped outside into the last hour or so of darkness. Cabal closed, locked, double locked, and performed a small ritual upon the door. To human eyes, it was no more efficacious than saying ‘Bless you' after a sneeze, but to Horst's senses, there was a feeling of tautness, as if the building had suddenly been wrapped in ethereal chains, drawn tight.

‘Do you ever get the feeling you're not coming back?' Horst said, looking up into the old house's eaves.

‘Every time,' said his brother as he drew on black kid leather gloves. ‘Even when I go out to purchase groceries.'

‘Your defences aren't as good as you think. I walked through them easily enough.'

‘They are more than sufficient. They are also highly discerning. I made them thus.'

‘Discerning? What, do you mean to say they
let
me through?'

Cabal did not answer. He hefted his Gladstone bag and walked down the garden path to the gate. Horst followed him, still talking.

‘But you thought I was dead. Really dead. Properly dead. Why would you…?'

‘I created a ritual such that the house will defend against intruders, not those who are invited, and not those who call—or called—that house “home”.' He opened the gate and walked through. ‘It was once your home, too, Horst.'

Horst picked up the suitcase and followed him out. He watched as his brother closed the gate behind them. ‘I think I feel quite flattered,' he said.

‘As long as it doesn't overflow into a disgusting display of emotion, you're welcome,' said Cabal.

Then he turned to the garden and addressed it. ‘I was unimpressed by my welcome when last I stood beyond this wall. The terms of our compact are clear.'

Within the garden, small things watched him with beady little eyes full of malice, guile, and severely limited intelligence.

‘We didn't
actually
eat you,' said a tiny wheedling voice.

‘I didn't
actually
give you the chance, but your duplicity was evident all the same. Allow me to refresh your obviously faulty memories. I allow you to stay within my front garden on the understanding that you defend the house against all intruders, except the ones I have described, on numerous occasions. Torch-bearing mobs?'

‘Eat them!' chorused the criminally insane fey of Cabal's garden, a tribe whose stature was inversely proportional to their malevolence.

‘Correct. The postman?'

‘Eat him!' they cried joyfully.

‘No!' snapped Cabal. ‘You let the postman by!'

‘Oops,' said the garden. There was some small shuffling while they hid a peaked cap behind a rosebush.

Cabal grunted angrily. ‘Salesmen?'

‘Eat them
‽
' came the reply, only half the chorus being entirely sure.

‘Yes.'

Horst leaned into Cabal's view and mouthed
Salesmen?
Cabal wafted him away impatiently. ‘Do not worry. We don't get salesmen out here,' he said, before adding in an undertone, ‘not anymore, anyway.' Horst's acute hearing caught the addendum, but he decided to let it pass for the time being.

Cabal turned his attention to the garden once more. ‘Johannes Cabal?'

‘Eaaaa…' The word drained away like a sinkful of embarrassing water. There was a heated discussion in the undergrowth. ‘Don't eat Johannes Cabal,' they finally said, with none of the enthusiasm of their previous answers.

‘And why don't you eat Johannes Cabal?'

More discussion. They seemed honestly nonplussed by this for a minute or so. Then one of the brighter ones had a revelation, communicated it to the others, and they took up the cry, ‘The Compact! The Compact!'

‘Correct. But not just the Compact between us. Can you think of another reason?'

Evidently, they could not, although they took a while to admit it. Cabal leaned over the wall and snarled, ‘Remember the Skirtingboard People. You get one warning, and this is it.'

As Cabal straightened up, Horst asked, ‘The
Skirtingboard
People? What are they?'

‘Extinct,' said Cabal meaningfully and more for the benefit of the listening garden than for Horst.

*   *   *

Johannes and Horst Cabal sat on the wall at the end of the garden and waited. They waited mainly in silence, but for the small sound of Johannes Cabal occasionally drawing up his sleeve to read his wristwatch. Finally, he looked sideways at Horst and said, ‘You seem remarkably calm about the approaching dawn.'

‘I know when it's about to crest the horizon. If they're not here by dawn, I shall just have to retire to the snug little resting place I made myself in the cellar and we shall go at sundown instead.'

‘The cellar…' said his brother.

‘Of course the cellar. Where else could I be assured somewhere to rest where no ray of sunlight would fall on me?'

‘Of course.' Cabal grew quiet, but his eyes betrayed his preoccupation.

Horst, who had no need of vampiric super-senses in most dealings with his brother, stroked his chin and added as an innocent afterthought, ‘Funny. I remembered the cellar as being much larger than that.'

Cabal jumped to his feet and started walking back and forth distractedly, checking his watch yet again. ‘Where is that entomopter?'

Horst smiled to himself, started to say something, but then the smile faded and he looked up at the starry night. ‘They're coming.'

‘They?'

‘Miss Montgomery said she'd bring one of the others with her in case we needed to carry very much gear. Just as well; the cargo space in her Copperhead was pretty crowded with just me in there on the outward journey. The other 'mopter can take your case and bag. That cane will be awkward if you were planning to take it into the cockpit, too. I'd put it in there if I were you.'

‘Extra cargo space…' Cabal was thinking rapidly. ‘Just a moment.'

He hurdled the wall into the front garden, much to the dismay of the wee folk who scattered almost invisibly but with plenty of tiny screams and several foul curses delivered in tones like chiming fairy bells. Cabal had no time for their finer feelings; he was already at the front door, temporarily annulling its occult defences, unlocking it, and ducking inside. Horst was conflicted by his interest in this new development and keeping an eye out for the approaching aircraft. Both the entomopters appeared in the eastern horizon, outrunning the sun, at the same moment Cabal reappeared in the open doorway. He had slung across his back a long canvas bag, and over his shoulder a fishing bag. Horst ached with curiosity to know how fly-fishing was going to help matters, but contented himself with instead lighting the flares he had been supplied with to delineate a clear landing area; two greens to mark the entry side, two red to mark the far edge. As the
Spirit of '76
and the
Buzzbomb
decelerated and came in to land on 45-degree descents, his brother joined him to watch.

‘Fascinating machines,' said Cabal.

‘I thought your scientific interests were more biological?'

‘Professionally, yes, but one cannot help but be impressed by the mechanical ingenuity of an entomopter.'

‘So enthusiastic. You should take lessons.'

‘I did. I can fly.'

Leaving his brother openmouthed in his wake for the second time in one night, Cabal approached the aircraft respectfully from the front, well clear of the blur of wings as they slowed to a halt.

When the wings were travelling at a visible speed and therefore unlikely to do more than break a limb if one were foolish enough to stand by them, the cockpits of both aircraft opened, the Copperhead's rear half canopy sliding back, and the Giaguaro's along hinges on its trailing edge. Cabal watched as two women climbed down, both exhibiting the unconscious awareness of where exactly the wings were that one would expect from highly experienced pilots so as not to inadvertently walk within their sweep and receive anything from a bone-shattering slap up to an impromptu amputation.

The woman from the Giaguaro was the first to reach Cabal. They eyed each other with a degree of suspicion in the flickering red and green light of the flares. To Dea Boom's eye, Johannes Cabal looked like a walking dead man, gaunt with illness, his paleness picking up the strange illumination making him look like a ghost in a cheap theatrical production. He stood resolute, yet the long bag on his back was clearly weighing on him, and for all his willpower he could not help wavering slightly beneath it. She did not know whether to respect him for that pride or despise him. For his part, he first noted the shoulder holster she wore, was aware of the weight of the Webley automatic snugged away in his own, and briefly felt a sense of comradeship in the Great International League of Shoulder Holster Wearers. She took off her flying helmet and ruffled her fingers through the short blond hair therein, and he decided—instinctively and with a terrible irrationality that would have made him snort in derision only a year or two before—that she was all right and that they would probably get along nicely. After all, she had short blond hair, a pistol in a shoulder holster, and she flew an entomopter. That was three commonalities right there.

‘You're the necromancer, right?' she said, and even over the sound of the engines winding down, he could make out the distinctive intonations of a Dutch accent. While many Germans find the Dutch accent inherently hilarious, Cabal's humours were balanced differently: strong in the choleric, and barely less so in the melancholic, a good showing for the phlegmatic, but the sanguine potters over the finishing line last and alone. Thus, as a practical linguist, he found nothing remarkable there, still less amusing. Then again, this was a man who had remained straight-faced while a medium—claiming to speak an obscure dialect of Enochian—had lowed at him like a cow in calf for ten minutes.

‘I am Johannes Cabal,' said Cabal. ‘I am not defined by my profession.'

She pursed her lips. ‘And this profession that doesn't define you, that would be necromancy?'