Ministry Protocol: Thrilling Tales of the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences

by Tee Morris

  *****

  The first bullet splintered the stairwell she hurried down. Caity’s heart surged into her throat, but she did as instinct demanded and leapt to the floor to hide behind a stacked mass of barrels.

  Miss Snow did much the same, choosing another barrel to crouch behind, so that they viewed each other across a narrow causeway.

  “Bannigan, cease fire this instant!”

  Caity didn’t expect Miss Snow’s demand to be obeyed. On cue, another bullet cracked against the stone floor, shooting sparks between them.

  Her jaw set. The pistol in her grip shook, but she firmed her hold and tried not to imagine that she might have to shoot a body, after all.

  The air was wrong down here. It should have been fresh and cool, but it smelled of old rot and forgotten meat.

  “’Tis not too late,” Miss Snow called, her back pressed to the wooden keg. She spared an encouraging smile for Caity. It faded just as quickly. “You can still make this right.”

  “You’re the one meddling,” the barman shouted, his voice sounding not at all as Caity remembered. Hoarse. Shrill despite the rasp. A little bit mad. “All you have to do is go back to where you came from and this will all fix itself!”

  “Bertie, come out here this moment!” Caity called, injecting her voice with all the stern authority she’d heard her da employ. “Enough is enough.”

  Her demand earned another shot, echoing in the dank cellar. “I’ve unlocked the old ways. The famine will ease, don’t you understand? Without your nosey friend, this might have gone on without blood.”

  “Without blood?” Caity repeated, aghast. “Bertie, me da’s dead! Fifteen more, all gone, because of you!”

  “I had nothing to do with it.”

  “Lies,” Miss Snow called, her tone sweet but firm. “You might not have intended it, Mr Bannigan, but you know as well as I the nature of artefacts. Especially that of the old ways. What did you do?”

  For a moment, he was silent. Wood creaked. Then, “In my family’s field. We found a gold idol in the earth.”

  Caity frowned. “Why didn’t you sell it?”

  “I was going to,” he called back, impatient enough that Miss Snow lifted a finger to her lips. “Then I remembered about... about—”

  “You can’t say his name, can you?” Miss Snow asked. She sidled along the barrels. “They won’t let you.”

  “They?” Caity whispered.

  “Him,” Bannigan shot back. “I’m being respectful!”

  “You are being puppeted,” Miss Snow replied. “Set down your weapon, Mr Bannigan. You know the consequences for toying with artefacts.”

  “No! I won’t let you interfere,” he shouted, and another gunshot tore through the edge of the barrel Miss Snow had sidled away from.

  Caity flinched. “Miss Snow?”

  “I’ll duck about,” she said, pitching her voice low, but reassuring. Her eyes sparkled, a becoming flush upon her cheeks. “I want for you to pop out and fire wildly at whatever you choose. Keep him occupied so that I might sneak up on him.”

  Caity nodded, though her heart was beating all too hard and she wasn’t certain she could hit anything. Perhaps if she fired, he might duck for cover.

  “I am ready,” she whispered.

  As one, Miss Snow slipped around the far side of the barrels just as Caity leaned out, her shoulder hitting the floor, and fired the pistol gripped in both her sweaty hands.

  In that moment, she glimpsed Bertie Bannigan, his hair wild about his head and his eyes so wide, the whites were clearly visible. He saw her just as she fired, and while the panic that filled his face gave her pause, it was nothing to the sudden, pointed silence that followed when the small board set up on the table beside him flew into the air.

  The pieces upon it—one gold figure and twelve of bone—scattered over the ground. Blood spilled in a red gleam, to spatter to the floor.

  For a long moment, nothing in the cellar moved. Not breath, not body, not time.

  Bannigan’s eyes bulged.

  “Caity, get down!” Miss Snow rushed through the narrow divide, seized Caity by the shoulders and wrenched her from view. A wind blasted through the cellar, so cold and foul-smelling that Caity gagged before Miss Snow covered her face with her gloved hand. “Don’t look,” she shouted, needing to despite their proximity; the screaming now erupting from beyond the barrel flooded through the ears and turned the blood to ice.

  It seemed as it might go on forever. She squeezed her eyes closed, her face buried in Miss Snow’s jacket. On and on, the wind howled and raged—but it did not turn over the barrels. She heard no crashing, no splintering.

  Just as soon as it began, it was over.

  Miss Snow eased to her feet, dusting off her trousers, and then helped Caity stand. Her expression was rather more sad than accomplished. “I had hoped to avoid this,” she said, though low enough that Caity wondered if she spoke to herself.

  “Where’s—”

  “Mr Bannigan?” Miss Snow stepped out from behind the stack of barrels. She gestured.

  Much to her chagrin, Caity was not wholly surprised at what she found.

  Bertie Bannigan lay dead, his neck twisted at an odd angle and slashed ear to ear as if in sacrifice. A bullet hole marred the surface of the board he lay sprawled upon, courtesy of her wild shot, but it was the scattering of white crystals all over that caught her eye.

  She knelt beside his twisted body, the first wash of tears pricking at her eyelids. There was no pulse in his limp arm, nor any signs of life behind his wide, staring eyes.

  Miss Snow crouched beside her, one hand coming to rest upon Caity’s shoulder. “They’d claimed him, in the end.” She reached over, brushing the white grains from the dead man’s cheek. “The Folk always do. It’s the price, you understand?”

  Caity dragged a forearm across her burning eyes. “I don’t. I thought this was the doing of...” She halted, the name placed already on her tongue but panic gripping her throat when she tried to say it.

  Miss Snow’s smile was small and compressed. “Being unable to say his name was a subtle clue, but one I should have paid attention to earlier. They wouldn’t stand for it, here.”

  “I still don’t understand.”

  “I mean,” Miss Snow explained patiently, “that Mr Bannigan here dabbled in a bit of old magic that should have been left well alone. By utilising the artefact he’d found, he attempted to call forth the god who could end the famine. Unfortunately, his methods...” She reached over the corpse to pick up one of the scattered twigs, stained and wrapped with twine. “The god’s symbol is that of a golden figure surrounded by twelve smaller figures in stone. By taking twelve sacrifices, the first born, he would guarantee a harvest.”

  “That’s bone, isn’t it?” Caity did not attempt to touch the board, or the droplets of red scattered amidst the crystals. “And chicken blood, I think. It smells like it.”

  “Correct.” Miss Snow sighed. “By failing to uphold the old ways as written, he only caught the eye of them eager to subvert such things. His intent was pure, but the dead are drawn to the dead. No god came here.”

  Caity clasped her hands together around the pistol she had wielded to such strange success. “The bells were the clue, weren’t they? The Folk are said to be repelled by them.”

  “Some are,” Miss Snow confirmed, and looked up as a dull report echoed faintly through the still air. “Without testimony from an archivist, I’m afraid all I can do is guess, but I believe that Mr Bannigan gained the attentions of the sluagh.”

  “The restless dead,” Caity murmured. “Said to be rejected from heaven or hell, and even the Otherworld.”

  “What Mr Bannigan did not realise,” Miss Snow said, her expression going quite grim, “was that gaining the attention of such forces always goes awry.”

  “You mean the sluagh are here? Now?”

  “Indeed, dear girl, and they have not wasted time. In distorting the legend of—” Even her mou
th hitched on the name, “—the Irish god, they have created a landscape where slaughter has taken root, not bounty. They will feed on the dead and harvest the innocent for their hungers. That is what toying with artefacts will gain one.”

  Caity heard it again, the scattered report she recognised as gunfire.

  She shot to her feet, a cry on her lips, and dashed up the steps.

  “Caitriona, wait!”

  She did not. Sprinting through the pub, she pushed her way outside and choked on the wind.

  It tasted of hatred, smelled of an anger deeper than any human heart could carry.

  Shouting filled the city as calls of violence turned to flame.

  Caity froze.

  Which side had lit the wick of war?