The Bandalore

by D K Girl

  ‘He’s so big.’ Someone exclaimed from overhead. A fourth assailant lurking in shadow.

  ‘Perhaps the nephilm are among us after all.’ This reply brought a chorus of squealing laughter, sounds that peppered down on him from every direction.

  ‘What do you suppose he is?’

  ‘It was human once, it smells bad.’

  ‘Should we make the giant run and scream?’

  ‘I’d like to see what giant tastes like.’

  Silas turned and fled. He dashed with mad abandon through the tombs and headstones that stood to block his way. His headlong journey saw him turn an ankle in a unseen divot. Silas grunted, biting down on a curse, and pushed on. His ankle throbbed with pain but there was as much chance of him stopping as there was of the sun falling in on him in that moment. His pursuers made no secret of their chase, laughing and calling to one another as they followed after him, leaping over the grave markers with ease. Silas’s dread deepened. They were indeed like wolves, predators who bided their time to strike. Squeezing through a narrow gap between two granite tombs, Silas burst out into an open space, a space in the graveyard that had not been already taken up by the dead. He glanced back over his shoulder, seeking out his hunters. The man bounded up onto the tombs Silas had just passed, as though wings lifted him. His malicious grin was the last thing Silas noted before the ground disappeared from beneath him.

  Silas tumbled down into a pit of darkness.

  Well, actually not so dark as it seemed, nor so deep. Silas hit wet earth with a muffled thud and splash, the air knocked from his lungs. The water at once clung to his clothing, its chill soaking through to his skin. He attempted to push himself to hands and knees, only to find that he was in a space barely bigger than himself. His shoulders grazed the rough soil around him, and it rained in tiny pieces into the water he knelt in.

  ‘Dear god,’ he said, with a hoarse cry.

  Silas had fallen into an open grave. The horror of it drenched him, stealing the bountiful air from his lungs. The waft of the earth now suffocating. In jerking motions he managed to turn himself, and dug his fingertips into the dirt walls, pulling himself into a kneeling position. His ankle berated every move. Those who hunted him gathered around to peer down at their imprisoned prey, and he saw far too late that though their bodies blocked the light, no shadows were cast from them.

  ‘Well, aren’t you in just the spot.’

  ‘Rather thoughtful of him I think.’

  One of them leaned too hard upon the loose edge and Silas was showered with dirt.

  ‘Leave me be,’ he shouted. ‘I’ve no quarrel with you, whoever you are.’

  ‘Who said there needed to be a quarrel?’ The group laughed, though this time the sound resembled all too well the rasp of the crow.

  Silas judged the height of the hole to be not much greater than his own, a head no more. He could stand, on an ankle that could barely hold him, but then what? He’d only succeed in bringing himself closer to those taunting him, and who could tell what assault they had in mind. For it was an attack they rallied for, he had no doubt. Silas remonstrated his decisions of the morning, beginning with the ludicrous invitation to Tobias Astaroth to enter his home. If not for that, then Silas would be safe and slumbering in his own bed.

  A sharp pain spliced across his shoulder. Silas cried out, throwing himself onto his back, attempting to move beyond reach of what had struck him. Light spilled across the features of those watching him, perched on the edge of the grave as crows might perch upon a branch. How horribly they had altered. Gone were the sly grins on human faces, gone were any trace of their humanity at all. Creatures most foul formed a living halo around Silas’s grave. Instead of human feet now thick scaled legs met with enormous claws, each easily the length of Silas’s own forearms. Multitudes of teeth filled their lipless mouths to bursting, their eyes sagging as though melting from their faces, and instead of hair now dirty, lank feathers formed a thin layer over their heads and bodies. The flimsy yellow shift dress was nothing now but shredded rags upon the girl’s body. A dark shape filled the air behind her, and Silas breathed in shuddering gasps as he recognised the plume of black-feathered wings.

  A moment later one of those very same wings was thrust down into his dirty prison. Silas covered his head, curling in upon himself. He was struck across the back of the neck, the feathers as sharp as knives. The heat of his own blood warmed his shoulders.

  ‘Stop!’ Silas cried. ‘Someone, help me.’

  In answer a new assault was launched. Silas pressed himself into a corner of the grave, covering his head as best he could. Hot agony spread across the tops of his hands as the knife points made their mark. Another caught his cheek and the warmth of blood once again made itself known. They toyed with him, any one of the strikes might have been the killing blow, so razor-like were the wing tips. They laughed at the amusement his torture was providing, drowning out his pleas for them to let him be. Mother nature chose that moment to add her hand to the fray, releasing a torrent of rain down upon them. Heavy drops that ran red with his blood. Rivulets streamed down his temples, a coppery tang rising above the freshness of the water. Had he imagined his second death it would never have been this, set upon by winged daemons, and putting up the most pathetic of fights. Silas licked his lips, tasting blood and the coolness of water. He did not know how he died the first time, but he liked to imagine it was not so awful as this. Mr Ahari had made it quite clear Silas was not immortal. If he did not move himself he was set to have his life ended already in his grave. Either by stabbing or drowning, such was the ferocity of the rainfall.

  There was the slightest of reprieves in the onslaught. Raised voices among his attackers, shouted words he could not discern, and a blessed pause in the slashing of their blades. He seized the moment, and his courage. Silas launched himself to his feet with a unsteady cry, his injured ankle singing with pain. The rain stopped at once, and one of his taunters released a screech that could have resurrected all the dead within the cemetery. Silas threw up his fists, readying to strike. Instead he found himself dodging a fast moving object, one that barely missed him before glancing off the edge of the grave and landing with a deadened thump at his feet.

  ‘Oh my god.’ Silas shrank into his corner, bile harsh against his throat.

  There before him, lying in the blackened water was the head of the young woman he’d first encountered. Eyes wide open, her mouth caught in her final scream. Sounds of pure chaos rained down into Silas’s grave. Hell-risen screams cut off at their quick. The scuffle of feet, and the grunt and groan of a fight rang out. Shapes moved above him, darting back and forth across the hole where he huddled, ripe with fear. Feathers rained down on him, and other things. Meatier things. Wet and unyielding upon the mud.

  The silence hit as suddenly as the chaos had begun. Stillness returned. The drip of water marking each moment. Silas trembled in his confines, taking short sharp breaths lest he make too much sound and draw the attention of those above. Pressure landed upon his shoulder and Silas was hauled from his pit, soaring some distance before he made contact with the ground once more. With a grunt and cry conjoined he landed on his stomach. Instinct rolled him onto his back, fists bunched. Someone set immediately upon him, their figure bathed in a sunset’s glow. Warm hands found Silas’s neck, clutching with a strength that left him immediately breathless. All too clearly he saw his attacker. Pitch’s stunning emerald eyes were blazing, their centre burning with flames of gold. That same glow of flame, as though he stood in front of a great fire, was evident around his body, naked but for the coat he wore. The creatures’ blood was spattered all over his face, and caked in the waves of his hair. A nasty smile played at his lips, revealing teeth stained too with blood. Silas tried to speak the man’s name, but there was no air to exhale. His vision was dotted with specks of white.

  ‘Fucking harpies,’ Pitch growled.

  Silas’s crushed throat allowed no reply.

  Was Pitch blind?
Or mad? Silas was fast becoming certain it must be the latter, for Pitch’s eyes were truly frightening. Widened and glazed. And his grin was awful in its width, stretching his lips until they seemed set to split. With the sounds of his own struggle growing faint, Silas gasped, an ugly gurgle coming from him. He was on the cusp of loosing consciousness. With his world darkening, and his body weakening, Silas levelled lacklustre thumps against Pitch’s chest. He managed barely two before all strength was gone. Silas’s hands fell. His right brushed against the draping side of Pitch’s coat, and the soft and glorious sounds of the bandalore’s song filtered down into Silas’s shrinking world. Blinking through a haze of white, Silas caught the flash of royal blue. With a last desperate twitch of muscle, Silas thrust his hand into the folds of familiar material. Finding the pocket where the bandalore nestled. Silas’s fingers clenched around it. Impossibly, thankfully, the bandalore lay in his grasp. Ears buzzing, chest set to explode, Silas thrust the device at Pitch’s head.

  He let loose a startled cry, and flew sideways. Soaring some distance before he landed with a heavy, comforting thump upon the ground. Silas sucked in a huge, gulping breath, and the air poured once again into his lungs. He clutched at his throat, wincing at the bruised flesh there.

  ‘What is wrong with you?’ he rasped.

  Pitch, his strange glow now disappeared, muttered an angered reply, but it was lost to Silas as he caught sight of the scene around them. Scattered around the open grave were the dismembered limbs of the creatures. Flesh and broken bone carpeted the sodden earth, with the feathers lying like crushed coal atop them.

  ‘Dear god,’ he whispered. A wild and rabid animal could not have done more damage.

  ‘What the fuck did you hit me with?’ Pitch sat up, swiping at his chin and smearing blood further along his jawbone. He wore Silas’s Inverness coat and nothing more, save for great smears of blood and disconcerting fleck of white and pink. The coat itself looked next to ruin, great rents in the back that allowed hint of the large tattoo upon Pitch’s back.

  ‘What have you done, Tobias?’ Silas attempted to rise, leaning hard upon a nearby headstone to relieve his ankle of the pressure. There was no sign of the couple who had been tending a grave earlier, and he hoped they had been spared the grisly battle. But surely someone had heard the screams, they would hardly be alone for long.

  ‘Nothing more than was intended.’ Pitch flicked at a gelatinous glob upon the cuff of Silas’s coat. ‘Is that how you thank all your rescuers?’

  Silas stared at him. ‘You do realise that you just tried to strangle me, after your so-called rescue?’

  Pitch shrugged, pulling the folds of the coat tight about himself, for which Silas was both grateful and horrified in equal measure. ‘So I got caught up in the moment. Can’t blame a man for being passionate about what he does.’ He touched at his head, where the bandalore had made contact. ‘But it appears you can stop a beserker in his tracks. What is that?’ He gestured at the bandalore still in Silas’s hand.

  ‘It’s mine.’ He enfolded it in both hands, clutching it to his chest. Silas would face those dreadful creatures again rather than allow Pitch or anyone else to have it.

  ‘Oh gods, settle down, big man.’ Pitch rose to his feet, making a rather futile attempt to tidy his bedraggled hair. Nothing short of a thorough bath would remove the signs of massacre from him. ‘No one is taking your toy from you. Perhaps you should have used it earlier.’

  The coat was several sizes much too large for him, running along the ground like a lady’s gown.

  ‘I didn’t have it earlier.’ Silas attempted a step forward and hissed at the effort. ‘Do you have any idea what just happened?’

  ‘Yes. You were cowering in a hole like a weeping babe while a cluster of harpies made sport of you. Are you coming? I doubt very much it’s a wise idea to remain here.’

  An understatement if ever there was, but Silas was not enjoying the rude cramp of muscle that radiated from his ankle.

  ‘I did not cower,’ Silas muttered, then louder he asked, ‘How did you find me?’

  Pitch gestured to the sky. ‘Rainstorm drummed me out of the most pleasant dream, which I will not thank you for. Who knew there were such uses for the common milk bottle? Once I awoke, Matilda led me here with her dribbling sun showers. What is wrong with you man? You will need to let go of that headstone, we aren’t taking it with us.’

  ‘My ankle,’ Silas growled. ‘I’ve injured it, and don’t believe I can walk upon it.’

  ‘By Gabriel’s sphincter you are an enormous bother.’ Without warning Pitch weaselled in beneath Silas’s arm, draping it across his own slender shoulders. In another life Silas might have laughed at such a slight man’s attempt to assist him but he knew better now. Pitch righted, and fairly lifted Silas onto his tip-toes.

  ‘Surely now your appetite is wet for a holy poker?’ he said. ‘Shall I take you to your bed?’

  ‘What on earth is wrong with you?’ Silas would have given his own soul to be yards away from the man at that moment, but he had no such choice to make. ‘What of the carnage?’

  ‘Rest assured, that does not qualify for carnage.’ Pitch tugged at the length of the coat with his free hand. ‘A skirmish, no more.’

  ‘Surely it will be discovered.’ Though how it had not been already he was at a loss to say.

  ‘Oh Satty has her troops well versed at cleaning up. Don’t worry your large but attractive head about it.’

  They made slow progress past the grand curving mausoleum, and to Silas’s great surprise he saw that beyond its furthest edge rain still fell in a heavy sheet upon the graveyard.

  ‘It does not rain where we stand?’ he said with wonder.

  ‘Of course not. Matilda would piss upon me at her peril. I despise having my hair ruined in such a way. It takes time to cultivate this perfection.’

  That perfection he spoke of was far from evident after his encounter, darkened black in places by blood. Not to mention the state of Silas’s coat. What had possessed the man to cloth himself in it anyway? A fortunate though strange decision. But Silas was more puzzled by the conversation.

  ‘Matilda?’

  ‘Part of Satty’s elemental foursome. Water, in case you could not surmise. Matilda is an undine with the most astonishingly agile tongue.’ Pitch shifted his grip on Silas’s arm, somehow managing to heft him so that only Silas’s tip-toes scraped the ground. ‘Oh remove that frown from your face, it does you no favours. The rain sent everyone scurrying, and now Matilda shields what remains of those fucking harpies from view behind a downpour. They’ll be dealt with by the appropriate people. Wouldn’t want any of the precious humans to see what we are really capable of now, would we?’ His bare legs shifted in and out of the folds of the coat, thankfully now buttoned low enough to cover his most intimate parts.

  ‘Harpies?’ Silas marvelled.

  ‘Has the encounter rendered you a moron? I just said they were.’

  ‘What did they want with me?’

  Pitch uttered a sharp, and vulgar curse. ‘Gods, you are insipid. I am not your personal font of knowledge. Do me the greatest favour, and shut your pretty mouth until we reach the Village. Then you can bore the eyeballs out of whoever you wish. Understand?’

  Of course he did not, but Silas was not about to test the man’s fragile patience. Silas nodded, fingering the bandalore, calmed by its return to his person.

  ‘Good boy.’

  ‘You’re not going to the Village.’ The surly voice startled them both, even Pitch jumped at the sound.

  Isaac stepped out from behind a formidable sycamore, buried beneath his usual layers of dark fabric.

  ‘Bullshit we aren’t.’ Pitch declared.

  ‘I’m to take you to The Atlas. Mr Ahari would have a word with Mr Mercer about his sojourn to the cemetery, and you’re to join him, Astaroth.’

  ‘Fine.’ Pitch put up surprisingly little protest to the order.

  Silas stared down at his muddie
d, bloodied, attire. ‘But my clothes—’

  ‘Don’t matter.’ Isaac grunted ‘Now hurry it up. You’ve left us with enough bloody work to do here as it is.’

  In fairness, Silas was hardly to blame for that.

  ‘I cannot attend like this, I am a dreadful mess.’ He gestured at Pitch. ‘And he is quite naked under that coat.’

  As much as Silas adored the garment he was not so sure he wished to wear it ever again.

  ‘Do I look like I care anything at all about ‘im?’ Isaac growled. ‘Just get to the carriage. Both of ya.’

  Silas resisted, albeit feebly, Pitch’s attempts to move them on. ‘We are covered in…rather dreadful things. This is ridiculous.’

  ‘You’d be surprised how wonderful dreadful things are for your skin.’ Pitch replied. He grasped the waist of Silas’s trousers, lifting him clear off his feet, causing his undergarments to wedge rather painfully in the crease of his buttocks. ‘Now let’s not keep Mr Ahari or his pints waiting. I have rather the appetite.’

  Chapter 13

  The Atlas was closed. At barely mid-morning not a single patron graced its seats, or slumped at the bar. Only the bartender Kaneko was in attendance, and when he looked up from his glass polishing his rounded face grew dark.

  ‘Mr Astaroth, back so soon?’

  ‘I simply cannot stay away from your pleasant self.’

  Kaneko’s scowl grew deeper. ‘I’d be more pleasant if you did not insist on breaking my glasses every time you grace us with your presence.’

  ‘Well, Mr Talbot should not insist on accusing me of cheating every time we play cards. Your misfortune can be blamed on him.’