The Brothers Cabal (43 page)

The blast was perfunctory and brutal. Those directly beneath were crushed and burned, those to the edges thrown by the massive over-pressure wave. A
rakshasa
, screaming like a cat, was flung clean across the river moat, cartwheeling as it flew, to smash into the castle wall and fall silently to the ground. Those who were not burnt had their lungs exploded inside their chests, their eardrums shattered, their eyeballs crushed.

The violence of the concussion startled even the attacking force despite their expectation of it, and the firing from their ranks halted. The shapechangers lay mangled and more than dead. Here and there, there was movement—a maimed werebear here, a disembowelled werefox there clung pitifully to their lives. Ensuring their weapons were charged with silver, the attackers advanced to deal with the survivors.

The line faltered as, from the veil of smoke and steam boiled from flesh and grass, a huge figure emerged at a charge. Its hide burnt, and the tussock of coarse black hair between its shoulders alight, the werebull—Minotaur incarnate—bore down upon the shocked ranks of the secret societies.

There was a remarkably loud
bang
. The werebull carried on running for several more steps until its metabolism regretfully admitted that even its autonomic processes were having a few problems getting along now that the werebull's brain had been comprehensively liquefied, at which point the creature fell forward nervelessly to lie twitching on the sod. Slowly, it started to metamorphose into its human form, an accounts payable clerk from a stationery company in Basingstoke.

Atropos Straka patted the breach of the borrowed Holland & Holland .577 Nitro Express elephant gun appreciatively. The effect of the massive 750-grain bullet had been most gratifying. Her shoulder would be sorely bruised come the morning, she knew, but that was better than being gored by a werebull. The necromancer Cabal had offered the gun to her when he had decided that it was too bulky a weapon to be used during the infiltration and, in any case, the
Ministerium
's heavy forces would be outside the castle if all went to plan. She nodded to those nearby, many of whom were twitching their heads in an effort to dissipate the ringing in their ears.

‘I like this gun,' said Atropos Straka. ‘It is a good gun.'

Professor Stone glanced back and saw Korka Olvirdóttir looking nervously ahead. She caught his glance and gave him a smile and thumbs-up, but her smile was wan. He could hardly blame her. Cabal had dissected the likely waves of the attack for them in his interminable, frequently supercilious, but—it transpired—very accurate briefing. He had dismissed the undead as almost beneath his notice, the lycanthropes as only slightly more problematical, and he had proposed ways of wiping them out quickly and effectively that had proved themselves most dramatically. Then he had given his view of what the third wave must be and told them, ‘This is when you will likely die.' Johannes Cabal might have many positive attributes, thought the professor, but rousing pep talks did not feature anywhere among them.

 

Chapter 18

IN WHICH MASKS FALL AWAY

The big man in the plus fours and monumental beard stood upon the flat, circular roof that, not so very long before, had seen an aeroyacht disgorge a bemused vampire. He looked down upon the vista to the west of the castle. Across the river, the agents of mundanity were advancing past the twice-dead zombies and the freshly exploded lycanthropes. They moved with discipline and caution; they knew what was coming.

Once, Rufus Maleficarus would have gloried in this moment, the dramatic pause before he poured terror and damnation upon his enemies. His father had been a performer, a practitioner of magics both illusory and real, and Rufus had followed in his path. His father had also been, by most lights, evil and insane. Rufus had followed him there, as well. Rufus had thundered and he had raged, never spoke when he might declaim, never moved but that he might pose.

Yet now he was quiet and composed. He gestured once, twice, and reality ripped in the air above him. The night's sky glimmered as if the light reflected from a babbling brook had been magnified and placed there, floating in a scintillating rend through the dimensions. It only took a moment for the tear to be noticed by that which lay beyond, the light intensified, and a new monstrosity shouldered its way through.

Rufus Maleficarus watched it with bland disinterest; a glittering patch of spiky light that flickered and dazzled. It was most like a jellyfish, but not
that
alike. Yes, there was a head analogous to the dome of a jellyfish, but this was more acutely angled, more akin to the head of a pencil. Yes, there were things like tentacles, but these hung heavily like roots from an unearthed plant, bifurcating and rejoining with themselves and their neighbours to form an untidy mass of bedragglement. Hanging further than these, however, was one longer tentacle, discrete and distinct from the others, from the creature's central axis. Unlike its listless fellows, this appendage twitched and swayed as if sensing its surroundings. Yet the creature was strangely beautiful; it pulsed in brilliant colours forming ever-moving patterns in blurred ranks of shapes that seemed neither chaotic nor geometric. Nor, however, were they entirely comfortable viewing. There was a sense that there were other colours that existed outside human perception, but flickering, perhaps lapping, at the edge of it. Infra-violet, ultra-red, nowhere to be found on the electromagnetic spectrum as understood by any creature of Earth.
*
The patterns and the colours made the creature very hard to look at. Then, the observers realised to their rising dread, it also made them impossible to look away from.

With a wet sucking sound, a second creature appeared from the void, rimed with extra-dimensional menace, and then a third.

Maleficarus pointed at the attackers below and then, as the entities went down to do his bidding, stuck his hands in his pockets like a man watching an unexciting local football fixture on a damp afternoon.

‘My, my,' said Johannes Cabal from behind him. ‘How insouciant you have become, Rufus. Once upon a time, you would have found yourself a suitable merlon, clambered upon it, and delivered a speech about how puissant your magic and how encompassing your ambition are.' Cabal looked around. ‘You didn't even bring an audience. This isn't like you at all.'

Rufus Maleficarus turned to face him, but said nothing.

‘And that summoning. The elegance of it. Where is all your posturing, your imprecations to arcane forces, your very …
physical
stylings that seem to imply that a successful casting will also clear your constipation? I'm disappointed, Rufus. Just a casual wave of your hand to summon an extra-dimensional entity. Where's the drama in that?'

Still, Maleficarus remained silent. Cabal walked closer, stopping some ten feet from what passed for his arch-enemy.

‘But, of course,' he continued, ‘you're not really Rufus Maleficarus at all, are you?'

*   *   *

‘Hullo, everyone,' said Horst Cabal.

‘Everyone', in this context, consisted of the ministers of the
Ministerium Tenebrae
and Lady Misericorde. They turned to face him from the westerly windows as he pushed the double doors wide and entered. Alisha Bartos moved by him, a large semi-automatic pistol of German origin in her hand. She walked sideways, opening a cross fire between her own position and Horst's, providing he'd been carrying a gun, too, which he wasn't, which was a shame, but the thought was there.

Burton Collingwood walked straight up to him, ignoring Alisha's pistol. ‘Thank heavens you've come back to us, my boy!' he said. ‘We need you desperately. I don't know who these people out there are, but they're cutting through our forces like wire through cheese!'

‘Well, Mr Collingwood,' said Horst affably, ‘I would but for two significant little problems. One, I'm actually
with
those attackers, so technically I suppose that makes me your enemy.' He shrugged and pulled a regretful face. ‘Sorry. The other is … Well, since I became what I've become, my senses are really very, very good. That's important because, last time I met you, you had a very distinct scent combining cigar smoke, expensive soap, and cologne, and a hint in your sweat that you should cut down on your drinking a bit. Whereas now'—he looked very seriously at Collingwood—‘you smell like a butcher's shop. Why do you suppose that is?'

Collingwood did not reply, at least not verbally. Instead he thrust both hands, which had become very sharp and spiny in the blink of an eye, straight through Horst's chest.

Horst hadn't felt pain commensurate with his mortal existence in a long time, but this experience filled in that vacancy nicely. He cried out in agony as the spines punched clean through him, emerging from the back of his jacket.

‘Shapechangers!' shouted Alisha, opening fire on the others.

‘Yes, thank you,' Horst managed, ‘the business with the changing shape was a clue.' The spines flexed, turning into hooks at their tips to prevent him freeing himself. ‘Help?'

The thing that was not Mr Burton Collingwood was just in the process of tearing Horst atwain when Alisha put a close group of three rounds in the back of its head. The shapechanger's flesh, already achieving unseemly levels of motility as it transformed, was ill prepared to resist such an intrusion, and it sloughed its face onto Horst's shirt.

‘Oh,' said Horst unhappily. Then he slid from the creature's spines as they softened in death to be dumped on the floor, subject to mixed emotions and great pain. He was hardly aware of the other false
Ministerium
councillors charging Alisha, dropping their forms as easily as an Essexian drops an
H
. Horst heard her gun bark rapidly, then she cried out. With an effort he looked up.

They were killing her. One—he thought it might have been Vizconde de Osma until a moment before—had reached her despite being clipped by at least one bullet and had her speared clean through to the floor. The last one was heading towards Horst to finish what the Collingwood monster had begun.

Horst tried to raise himself but staggered and fell back to his knees. He'd lost too much blood in the first attack. What little he could spare he was burning to accelerate his own mind, to stretch objective seconds into a subjective minute. He reached out for plans, tactics, bright ideas, stupid ideas, it's-a-million-to-one-shot-but-it-might-just-work ideas, but all of them foundered on his injuries and weakness.

Well, well, well
, said a small voice in his head.
So Mr Morality could do with a bit of help, could he?

‘Yes, actually,' thought Horst.

Not going to happen, mate
, said the little voice, somewhat spitefully.
I think I'll just let this one play out.

‘That particular scenario finishes with me being torn to pieces,' pointed out Horst.

No skin off my nose.

‘Look, I think you're forgetting something important here.'

Oh?

‘You're not actually a separate entity,' thought Horst. ‘You're just a convenient mental construction that I've created to allow me to compartmentalise the unacceptable urges of my vampirism.'

There was a pause.

I'm not sure what that means.

‘If I die, you die, which is pretty much
all
the skin off your nose. Besides, you're missing another point which is of more immediate importance to you,' added Horst, ever the people person, even when the people was him. ‘The shapechangers are human, despite appearances. If we're going to survive, they have to die. And they are
full
of blood.'

Another pause.

Still not quite following.

‘They are full of blood, and they are all yours.'

Oh …
said the little voice.
Well, why didn't you say so?

For the doppelgänger charging him, there was a moment when it blinked, and in that instant Horst was suddenly right in front of it. ‘Hello,' said Horst, and smiled a very unfriendly smile.

The doppelgänger never completed the thought that began,
What long fangs this fellow …

*   *   *

Rufus Maleficarus smiled. ‘When did you guess?'

Cabal winced. ‘Guess? I'm a scientist. I study the evidence. The fact that I killed you very thoroughly was my starting point.'

‘So? You're a necromancer. Is it so hard to believe that I rose again?'

‘Yes. Yes, it is. As a zombie, I could have believed it. As a revenant, like your dear doubly departed father, this, too, I could believe. But look at you. You're in full ruddy health. I've spent years trying to perfect such a process. Years.' Cabal seemed momentarily distracted as he realised the weight of the word. He rallied his concentration and looked keenly at Maleficarus. ‘Frankly, Rufus—you don't mind if I call you “Rufus”, do you? Just for the sake of convenience?—you're not clever enough to produce such a miracle.'