Johnson-Pole-whatever’s a different kettle of fish. I can’t place him at all. And his uniform is different. Red and grey blocks rather than black with blue trim. No rank insignia and just a single badge that looks like a particularly contorted version of the unity rune the Fae use. He speaks affectless colloquial English of a type I barely recognise, all short sentences and cut edges.
He lets out a slow breath. “That won’t work on me.”
“Worked fine on your oafish French friends.”
Blank face. Then a smile. “Go fish.”
So that’s another option off the board. My voice has a compulsive element which will make most humans want to do as I ask. If I want to, I can make it a very persuasive compulsion with several delightful layers, like a tiramisu of conversational invitation.
I reminisce for a moment over all the dozens of would be vampire hunters or death cultists (no one hates a vampire more than someone who worships death) who beat the first element and then fell for the hook at the end. The flavours of betrayal and confusion as they realise what they’d done, and a polite exposition to make the meaning clear as all must learn their fault.
In any good verbal trap the urge to explain is the true compulsion. The monologue. It builds into the way the human mind works, unthinking action and then a moment later the flash of inspiration providing a convincing logical explanation of the actions past.
Isn’t it nice to explain how you’re not a creature of instinct, doesn’t it make you feel so wonderfully superior when dealing with some poor little blood drunk idiot?
With Mr. Pole there hadn’t even been a flicker. I’ll note him down as a true stoic.
“Familiar trick. It won’t work on me. And don’t be so dismissive of my fr…” he reconsiders the word. “Allies. We’re all on the same side. Even if we can disagree over methods. Except you. It’s my prerogative to complain about them. Not yours.”
He itches at his arms. That must be where he holds his power. Interesting.
“If we’re going to get along Albrecht, we need to get one thing straight. I know about you.” I look at him with my best dubious expression, the one I reserve for Masters suggesting we turn a military man, or someone suggesting Spanish cuisine. “I’ve studied you for decades. Chased after hints. Followed them. Wasted a lot of time. I know you’ve got talents. You’re as old as Vampires get. And you’ve got the raw power to back it up but don’t think that you’re getting out of this easily. My allies will hurt you if you get out of line. I will finish you.”
He pulls up a sleeve and reveals a line of sigils and runes that are very different from the ones added to my wrists by the Protectorate dabblers.
“So we understand each other, Master Albrecht.”
They hurt to look at and include elements I haven’t seen before. Something protective, targeted upwards and silencing the natural rhythms of the Earth.
Well, well well. Mr. Pole has tricks, and power too.
“I believe we do, Mr. Pole.”
“Neither of us want to end up in a fight though. Your brain seems to work. Must be an age thing. If you help us, we’ll help you. You can be an asset and the organisation I work for does not, cannot, waste anything.” He opens a slotted window in the side of the vehicle. A broken landscape outside of overgrown ruins and cankered trees. “This is what we’ve got left. Nothing more. Lose much more? We’ll have nothing.”
He closes the slot and tilts his head back. Adjusting his earpiece. That telltale hiss.
His friend is back.
“Busy here, Turk…” He taps the device in irritation. “I can’t hear you. Repeat please.”
More garbled nonsense. He takes off his earpiece and fiddles with some tiny rotating pieces muttering to himself as he does.
As Mr. Pole appears to be otherwise engaged I close my eyes and meditate. Didn’t I used to love to sleep or was it the opposite. Meditation is a poor replacement either way.
I chuckle to myself. At this point if I want to learn about me back before events intruded, I would have to pick up a book like anyone else or go dig in a Tell somewhere dusty and Turk-ridden.
Pole, Turk. One more and I will have a handle on their codenames.
A moment of clarity, brought on by a bump in the road. I did not like to dream. My dreams were of burning cities of mud bricks cracking in the fire, and children screaming under chariot wheels and iron shod hooves.
I relax. At least until I’ve made some new friends in the present other than the intriguing Mr. Johnson-Pole. And the ghosts of my old friends, who hardly count. Helene in the floor is grinding the stumps of her teeth against her split lips. She was more of a conversationalist when she had a tongue.
“Odd that he uses the name Johnson. Though it is a common enough name.”
Nothing from her. Echoes rarely have anything to add to such banal observations.
To pass the time I direct my mind towards what a good friend old Johnson from before had been, how wonderful they had all been. What memories I have are golden, before they fade and this was as good as yesterday.
Under blue skies and by the ancient port of Naples, Helene watches the ships and smiles as Johnson waves from the deck of a Neapolitan Frigate as it pulls close to the docks and the ropes are tied and stayed.
A secretive glance between the two of them, furtive and sweet. She and Johnson had their own little secret trysts which I turned a blind eye to, love is a thing for the living yet its continued existence brings life to my old bones.
A shadow rises blotting out the sun…
And then I am back in the vehicle under red skies and Helene of the now sinks back into the metal fibre floor leaving nothing behind but a gurgled whisper.
We were never meant to exist this long.
5
Some Witches; Rescuing
About half an hour later into my surprisingly comfortable journey (I have to admit those big wheels can really absorb the worst ruts) I begin to feel something at the edge of my senses.
It scratches at my eyeballs like insects are running tiny segmented legs across their membranous surface. It hisses like a hundred thousand cicadas in the corn fields of the mid-west when I investigated the plagues of the new republic.
It is a feeling with which I am all too familiar. How could I not be? A thousand ambuscades in our Family feuds, and a hundred Fae assassins with malice aforethought, every sneaking murderer hidden in the ceiling with sharp intent, all scattered across the long centuries of my existence. My life seems to have been one long series of mindless assaults by the ill-informed.
In short, there is something magical up ahead on the road and it comes with malice aforethought.
Not to me, specifically. That would feel different, my teeth would itch and the world would come into sharper focus, a fight or flight instinct as I declared it to my companions of the time, whilst picking glistening fragments of a Kappa kill-squadron out of the legs of an ally.
Silly coral men, sending golems to strike at me.
Given the circumstances, I suspect this is ‘my ride out of here’. I hope horses are not involved. I have a dislike of those animals on which I have never been able to put a finger.
No sign of any reaction from my new friends in their ambulatory metal boxes. Wheels roll and engines hum. The slot-window in the cabin is open once more, letting in all the scents of this world and I can see the storm clouds above and the tops of broken buildings along the side of the road with curious eyes peering down.
Honestly this world does not appeal to me one jot.
Outside our box of technological mobility the world seems to match its darkness with a near constant icy drizzle and it stinks of sulphur and rot. Something has scraped all the civilisation away and much of the nature and replaced it with fungus and ruins.
Cold, dark and disappointing. All I can pray is that I am not going to suffer in addition the stench of wet horse whilst experiencing its cold drear.
For the purposes of rescue something like
this mechanical vehicle would be very acceptable. I could get very used to big wheels and the warmth of the heaters built into the walls, they say we don’t feel such things but they are very wrong. Every master loves his comfort.
I open an eye to look at Johnson-Pole. He is sleeping, poor child. Seeing up close and free from his gimlet eyes I am able to see how old the man must be now he is no longer attempting to mimic on of us, there are sprays of lines running from his eyes. His brow is furrowed and the bristles on his chin are silvered. He needs his sleep. It must have been a busy few days for him.
Even at rest there is a determination to the set of his mouth that hints at efficiency. Had he been awake I suspect that he would have detected the approaching ambush. Another weakness in even the best human operative, mine always operated in twos or threes to address this issue.
The sense of danger grows. A moment more.
And there we are.
There’s a sharp crack that snaps its way through the air as the vehicles pass across some invisible line drawn out with power, malice and craft. So very much malice. It is a constant of the arcane that practitioners colour the arcana they use with their personality, their history, the contracts they have burnt into their souls to acquire the powers they wield.
The civilised ones that is. Those who use the respectable forms of power.
The sigils on my wrists, for example, taste of mulch. Thin soup, cold barracks glowering out in mute hostility at a worn-out world. They reflect contracts made with despair and weakness.
Whoever drew this line is powerful, that power blended with grace and poise. Bound into the very world that brought them forth.
The motion of the vehicle’s in which we travel pivots, forwards becomes sideways, and motion becomes inactivity for moment as the coach judders to a halt, before resuming in newer forms.
That fight or flight reaction I mentioned triggers and everything slows to a crawl. Danger comes in impersonal forms.
I am thrown against the bars of my rusty cage, there is nothing on which to steady myself and my hands are bound.
Mr. Johnson-Pole twists with the momentum, arms flailing and an expression of shock passing across his great dark face, then flies forward in his seat. Inertia is running its course across his body until interdicted by a kind of restraint he wears which passes over his shoulders, across his chest and down to twin locking points set into the metal floor. Friction pulls the sleeves up over his wrists again as the restraints grip, and those interesting runes thus revealed deflect the magical elements of the attack, the panic, terror and nausea that might overwhelm even his iron resolve displaced in a rain of sparks like filings tossed through a fire.
His magic feels cold and mechanical, the powers drawn from contracts of iron and earth, no heart, no soul, but efficient and powerful. He is quite an interesting gentleman, all told.
Not that it’s helping him right now. The main force of the ambush elements aren’t directed at him, those are by-blows. Instead it is coursing through the mechanical toys his people and those he works with seem to love.
Which makes his magical protection functionally irrelevant. I sympathise. I have been known on rare occasions to come to a ‘gun fight’ with a knife, or less.
Screams from up ahead. The vehicles possess a separate drivers compartment for the coachmen and above us the turret is also screaming, or rather the men inside who would otherwise be directing the fire of that heavy cannon at their attackers are now otherwise engaged. Pain and disgust in the screams rather than death rattles, a hint at our assailants to go with the craft.
Thumps and crashing of frantic men trying to get out of a place that has suddenly become an uncomfortable-unbearable trap, but all escape is closed to them so they must endure their personal calvary for a while yet.
The people who pulled this little caper do not kill their enemies unless they had to but they or at least their ancestors were enormous believers and enormously skilled at making them wish they were dead.
I give myself the pleasure of a quiet chuckle. I’ve earned this after those holy water dousings.
Johnson is jabbing frantically against what I assume to be the releases to his restraints and at the same time shouting into his earpiece, appearing to forget that it doesn’t work. Someone is listening however, as there is a mocking high-pitched tonal screech which causes him to tear off the headpiece. It crackles with electrical discharges as it hits the metal floor and the screech turns into a delighted cackle.
With a hiss of hydraulic pistons the back of the vehicle drops and deploys a ramp on to cold wet ground stinking of mould. I can see that my low expectations of the weather have been adequately met as it is indeed raining on the pretty young witch standing jauntily in front of the ramp’s end.
If there were any doubt remaining as to her allegiance she is wearing a literal pointy hat. The brim of said hat is dripping a stream of sulphurous rain on to her flowing robes which appear to be sensibly waterproofed.
Johnson-Pole takes one look at his attractive assailant and his hands go up in a warding gesture. “Calm now… no need for any hostility…”
The Witch snorts, derisively “Lookin’ like a pig in a poke there, Agent Poley. If you were hopin’ for a little assistance from your Union fellas up yon road then you’re waitin’ in vain. ‘Fraid your lads won’t be coming for you for quite a while, bit of an accident with their carrier engines, and somethin’ about a plague of bees, goddess love ‘em.”
Pole’s is weighing up his options, fingers twitching. I hope he comes to the right conclusion. There seem to be rather a lot of witches out there. Remember patience my complicated friend.
The witch makes it easier on him. “You’re right that there’s no reason for any more nastiness though. All just doin’ what we do here. So,” her hand comes off her hip and points at him. “I’d just sit tight and listen to the show whilst we take this lump of fancy skinniness off your hands. All be over in a minute and you can go back to yer paperclips or whatever it is you do with your free time.”
With a sigh, Johnson-Pole takes the witch’s advice and lowers his hands. A picture of passivity. Fake, of course. He is concentrating intently on the wall opposite. I feel the stir of a counter spell sliding into the metal and the sigils on his arms begin to twist across his corded black skin, but it will take him a while to unpick all that’s in place here.
“Bravo, ladies.” I say from my cage, then sotto voce. “Mr. Johnson-Pole’s still working, you do realise?”
“Ignore him. He’s wasting his time and he’s not all bad, given what he is.” She slides up the ramp in sweep of robes. “Now Lump, lets see what we can do with these bars…”
“Lump?” I pick myself up and crack apart the bars with a word. I stretch my fingers and wipe away the shoddy binding runes with the gnarled tips of my fingers and a little of the rainwater from the witch’s hat, giving her a nod of thanks. “Powerful magic in a witch hat you know young lady.”
The witch shoots me a look of surprise and Johnson-Pole’s face twists for a moment into a mirror of the witch’s. “Now why, I have to ask myself in this bloody downpour, did you need a bloody rescue if you could do that, Monsieur Lump?”
“I delight in the opportunity to meet new friends?” I reply as innocently as three thousand years of existence can allow. It is, after all, the honest truth.
A snort and my black robed friend walks me from the stuffy heat of the carrier and into the biting fresh air and a face full of wind propelled ice shards. I need to find a hat, and soon.
The forest has pulled close around the ring of transports, no need for horses or mechanical assistance in our travels with Witches involved!
Whatever triggers the witches have set that were tripped by those big mechanical monsters to put us in this admirable position have also shifted the trees to close off the road at both ends. The canopy of leaves crowds close overhead to hide the scene from above.
Practically we are in our very own secluded forest
clearing. A sensible precaution against other supernatural forces who could have eyes in the sky or indeed some mechanical wonder of which I am unaware.
I nod my head in admiration to the witch beside me.
“Not into the woods yet, Lumpy.”
I disagree. There are muffled shrieks coming from all the transports and the same thumping sounds of panicked men using utterly ineffective brute force in the manner of their kind. Some half-hearted magic is fizzing about from a few of the brighter sparks, cantrips and minor arcana too unfocussed to interfere with the witches’ plans.
Johnson-Pole’s more effective counter spell is still coalescing in a web of blue lines spreading slowly across the skin of his vehicle.
My behatted friend comments half to herself, “Oh Poley. You never do give up,” before unpicking a little at the edge of the man’s efforts and swatting the released fragments playfully towards the first carrier causing a blue burst of flame to erupt from the ground. Its wheels deflate with a sad hiss and it sinks into the mud which increases the frenzied thuds from within.
Swearing from Johnson-Pole and a warm laugh from the witch.
I look at her as we walk away from the scene of this little heist. “Poley?”
“Coven knows Agent Pole pretty well. There’s some history between some of the lasses and his little spooky corner of the Union. Not all fight-fight.” She shakes her head in a spray of rain droplets. “Lots you don’t need to know right now Mr. Lump.”
“And… Lump?” I add.
“Yeah, well. Lump’s what we’ll be calling you for now and you best be answering to it my good Master Lumpy. Coven mistress says it’s part of the deal,”
I wince. “I had hoped you would have forgotten that little piece of tomfoolery.”
A chuckle. “Yeah, we’re renowned for forgetting stuff, Lumpo. The old book says that for services previously rendered in the stinky olden days before they invented proper magic you get one rescue, any circumstances, and on the basis of the agreed terms as set out in said tome, the one who rescues you gets to call you whatever the hell they want till next Samhain. I rescued you, so I get to name you, so that’s your name and you’re going to like it for a good few months.”
Master In His Tomb Page 5
