Master In His Tomb

by Jack Holloway

  The boy lacks patience.

  There is knock on the door to my room.

  “If that is you Ariadne, you may enter. Though try and keep the cat out, he keeps trying to pull up the carpeting and he is doing an excellent job of it.”

  “Cheers.” Ariadne strolls in, she seems subdued and is wearing her informal dress of trousers and what I now know to be a t-shirt that states in faded dye that she ‘hearts’ Paris. I can’t tell if the sadness is for a specific emotional reason or if it is due to the fact she ate an entire strawberry trifle at dinner. She is also not wearing her hat – her battle against the low ceilings finally over.

  Her hair is truly lovely. A snaking swirl of dark locks. An echo of memory reminds me of happier times long ago.

  “Good evening young lady, I take it you enjoyed your repast of earlier this evening?”

  She burps. “It was some good grub, Lumpy. I’ll give these fangers that. Haven’t had a proper trifle in years. Where did they get the bloody cream from? Not literally bloody ‘course, that would be gross, but do they have a herd of underground cows or something?”

  “Umm. I’m not sure those exist but I’d be happy to be told they do.” Underground cows. Why hadn’t I thought of that?

  “They don’t. That I know of. Urgh. Better not be fecking rat milk.” She grimaces, mouth twisting into a lopsided letter P.“But that’s not why I’m here.”

  I wait, hand poised over the papers.

  “What are we doing here Lumpy? It’s not that I’m not grateful for the feed, and Hemlock’s happy as a butcher’s dog clawing all this upholstery, but why are we stuck under this dead city surrounded by the dead and their pals?”

  “Research.” I point at the papers before me. “If we did not create this situation, and I have no reason to believe we did given the end result, then I suspect that my erstwhile family will have spent a lot of time and effort attempting to ascertain the party who did. And given the nature of the catastrophe that has overtaken this world I suspect that whoever did this will have used some of our old research to do it.”

  “And…”

  “And all those things are here.”

  Ariadne looks at me with a shrewd look in those dark eyes of hers. “You think someone adapted some nastiness your lot were working on to screw up the world before?”

  I nod. “The Masters who killed my friends and buried me in that damnable tomb were desperate to address the issue of the sun. Could not get them off the subject. Lunatics and monsters, a primeval urge to rediscover pure darkness. It may not have stopped us from moving around but it stopped our best soldiers, there is nothing better in a battle than a few hundred like our friend Camelle out there. And removing the sun would mean we could rebase the human food chain so that it was reliant on us and our produce.”

  “Not how it worked out though was it Lumpy.”

  “That’s why I know it wasn’t us. When I left, we hadn’t dealt with the issue of how to make things grow under conditions optimal to ourselves, and I wasn’t eager to assist. We are a light not a snuffer. Ideas ahead of their time anyway. As usual. Those of that party also couldn’t work out how to use the Krakatoa principle to erase the sun, too much power and no way to get everything up into the sky even with gunpowder, which I thought was interesting as an experiment based on the hollow earth hypothesis…”

  Ariadne snorts out a half laugh. “Did you really try that?”

  “Yes. I did. The end result was extremely disappointing.”

  “Moving on…”

  “From the looks of things Serah and the others managed to overthrow my old nemeses at some point. That would explain why the new crops my allies invented were disseminated so widely and why they threw open their stores when the night fell. My former compatriots would have been considerably less helpful. So we have a group who would have done the deed, but who would not have taken the steps that followed, and a group of Masters who would never have done this, and whose actions fit with those that occurred. We wanted to work with humans not…”

  There is a hysterical scream from outside. Some trick of the tunnels we sit under. “That.”

  “Savages,” mutters Ariadne and casts a protective hex absentmindedly .

  “Don’t judge them too harshly. They don’t understand yet. They haven’t had the chance to grow, and the only powerful humans they meet are your kind who don’t engage with them and… the Union.”

  “No one likes the Union,” she says, the subject makes her cheer up a little.

  “Mr. Johnson-Pole seemed a fair enough man. A little taciturn but generally a good fellow.”

  “Is that the Agent who was torturing you Master Lump?” she grins a white toothed grin, cat like and malicious. “Didn’t know you went in for that sort of thing!”

  I groan. “Two things wrong with your assumptions Mistress Witch.”

  The grin hangs in the air as her eyes sparkle.

  “First” I hold up a finger. “It wasn’t Mr. Johnson-Pole who tortured me, it was his bumpkin cousins who he clearly thought were not acting appropriately.”

  “Acting appropriately” she crows. “Ha!”

  “Second,” I add, ignoring the smug witch. “I don’t go in for any kind of anything nowadays. I am far too old for any of those shenanigans and that is a matter of fact.”

  “No shenanigans!” Ariadne is chuckling so much her shoulders are shaking.

  “No shenanigans whatsoever!” I frown. “I am the best part of three and a bit thousand years old, young lady. Those fires smoulder and die in time. A nice cup of tea, some scones and a good book is all I ask for in my twilight years.”

  A snort. “I wouldn’t say anything about twilight Lumpy. Or maybe you need to do a bit more reading.” She yawns. “Anyway. Just wanted to come in and say goodnight and get a bit of a heads up if there was a plan of sorts percolating somewhere in that gap filled head of yours. Goodnight Master Albie.”

  I smile. “Not Lumpy?”

  She waves me away. “I’ll keep it in reserve. You sort all this out and get me Ireland back, and we might forget that whole rescue shite ever happened.”

  And with that she leaves. And with that I go back to my studies and the thought that I have always been lucky in my companions.

  30

  A Pony Is Sometimes Just A Pony

  “Nope, he’s off.”

  Mr. Thomas watches as the Colonel enter the forests with a faint look of distaste playing across his face. Besides him a woman, naked but for a wet pony skin and ill-fitting saddlebags, is puking up a stream of green tinged vomit and gluey spit.

  “Fuck.” She heaves. “Ing.”

  Thomas holds up his finger to estimate the Colonel’s running speed. “Holy shit, he’s a fast one. Didn’t think the old fucker had it in him, must have really kept himself in shape.”

  A fit of coughing. “Transformation contracts.”

  “I don’t think he’s going to get far though. Could just let him run himself to death.” Thomas smirks, a hint of discomfort in the expression from where the shadow is eating away at him. “If the Village Green Preservation Society doesn’t get him first.”

  He looks down. “Are you okay there, my Lady?”

  She looks up from the ground green eyes flashing and throws him the pony skin. “Give me your damn coat.”

  He does.

  She throws the saddlebags off. “And check if there is a set of clothes in there. That witch must have had a change and I doubt the Vamp remembered to empty them before he dumped me on that old idiot.”

  Whilst Thomas does as he is told, as he bloody well should, she looks to the city. The transformation spell and her period with the Vampire’s party had proven a mixed blessing. She had learned a lot of what the Cult needed about the Master, so the experience wasn’t a complete waste.

  First and foremost the Shadow was not him. Second, she now knew where the Vamps were keeping the rest of it, what would save them all and stop the curse chewing through them faster than
they could train up neophytes.

  Problem would be getting in.

  She almost wishes that the idiots had taken her with them but if she had had to chew one more bowl of oats or nibble on one more blade of grass she would have exploded. Two big problems with transformations, first you had to have the skin of the thing that you changed into which with ponies was an inconvenience as they stank in the rain, the second, the stuff you ate and drank stayed exactly what it was when you ate it.

  Until it came back up. Ah, there it goes again.

  As she purges the revolting pottage of vegetation and Scottish breakfasts from herself, she sees Thomas come up with a set of black robes and a fucking hat.

  “Small mercies,” he smiles.

  “Shut the fuck up, Thomas.” She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. “Only thing that was remotely bearable about that whole fuck up was that I got my hair knots sorted by that stupid witch.”

  “Wasn’t a bad plan then.”

  She glares. “If you had done your job properly, we wouldn’t have needed a plan at all. The original plan, my plan, would have worked fine and you could have hit on the witch or the golem, whichever took your fancy, without wasting my time.”

  He shrugs. “Difficult to plan for someone like that. He’s so bloody loud you have to tune him out or you’d go deaf. And I wasn’t expecting to have to kill off that damn patrol, and you saw how the messenger was? So uncooperative, Vamp didn’t do a good job on that at all. Time was passing, the great work was slowing, so… the pony thing was a bit of on the fly stuff and I can’t do the changes. Not enough in the tank what with the whole fending off death thing.”

  He wriggles his fingers in the direction of the sky.

  “Get back to base and get yourself back into fighting shape. If everything goes to plan…”

  “Ha! Seems unlikely,” his voice fades as he speaks, her expression silencing him. Diana is a terrifying being at the best of times and naked and covered in blood it is like facing an angry goddess. Something from the rites of Eleusis which could you get you torn into itty bits of talkative necromancer.

  “When everything goes to plan, we’re going to be travelling quick and we don’t know yet what’s waiting for us. Did you bring the next subject?”

  “She’s in the bunker. You can change there if you would like?”

  “I would like that very much Thomas. And I would like it if you fucked right off right now so I can do what’s necessary without you drooling like a blood drained corpse.”

  “Sure Diana.” He looks down. “You’re an attractive woman. Can’t blame a man for looking.”

  “Oh, that’s where you’re very wrong Thomas.” She cocks her head. “I can fucking blame you and I think you’ve seen quite enough.”

  He barks out a nervous cough that turns into a coughing fit. She watches him with zero sympathy. “I’ll just be off then.”

  The clouds shriek and there is a burst of lightning across the sky as her erstwhile companion disappears into the roiling chaos. Of all the people to have the shadow over them, it couldn’t have happened to a nicer bloke.

  Diana looks at the pile of witch’s robes and that god awful hat for a moment and then turns purposefully to the bunker. She does however pick up the flensing knife that was the other element of the necessities left by Thomas.

  Would be a waste to get dressed when you don’t know what shape you’ll be in an hour or so.

  From above there is the sound of rotors and the bawl of Union speakers declaring friendship for all and rewards for co-operation.

  “Great. More to the party.” The cult mother quickens her step.

  31

  Vespine

  The catacombs are not the most restful place to spend any length of time, whether you are alive or dead. In that they surely must be considered a failure.

  The feeling of being buried dozens of feet under a dead city is uncomfortable even for one who seems to have spent much of his life involuntarily incarcerated underground.

  Then there is the fact of being surrounded by ghouls trying to get your attention whether because they want your blessing, or they want to consume your legs.

  Then there’s the noise. Constant screaming wears at nerves. Some of the cacophony is from victims dragged down here by the denizens, often awaking from a sorcerous sleep and quickly realising their fate as their murderers approach with a hungry grin. Others are from newly turned vampires, dead things unable to control their hunger and screaming in that extended birth pang that lasts two maybe three centuries without the appropriate support.

  I have no memory of my own period in that state. I am glad. I understand that it is better that way.

  It is one of the reasons I am loath to turn anyone who does not understand what is involved in the transition from life to unlife. There is an irony in the thirst, we don’t need to drink blood in any meaningful way. We’re dead and animated through arcane processes that even I do not fully understand. The anima within the blood is useful for other magical processes, just not vampiric life.

  Those centuries of thirst are a carry over, from whatever began the race of Vampires. A hollowing. I have a theory that the process is like a pyramid. The first vampire must have been hungry indeed, and with each generation it dilutes, becomes easier to control. It is a side effect, by which we are defined.

  Nearby one scream blends with another and I wince, one melody triumphant, another terrified.

  I shake my head and move on.

  In my day we had counselling for the newborn, and a hierarchy of helpers ready to provide support and a sufficient supply of blood to ease the young into their new existence. It doesn’t have to be like this for any of them, newborns nor humans. Maybe the issue is lack of structure, we were hidden and now we are not and we act like pigs at a trough without the threat of punishment.

  A shame. Good deeds should be a natural concomitant of life.

  Not life. Existence. Ha ha!

  I am making some final adjustments to my plans for the day despite the interruption when Camelle and his secretary walk in.

  “Can we…”

  “Already did.” I shrug.

  “You brought some friends I see.” The secretary says. She is middle aged ghoul with a Polish accent, and a skinner’s knife at her belt whose edge is stained in rusted red. She might have been pretty once but years of blood sucking and a life underground has left her a little ragged around the edges with bones too close to the surface and an unhealthy grain to her skin.

  I still prefer her to the last Master’s secretary. He was an odd cove.

  “Yes, I think you met them last night.” I try to place her. “Were you at the dinner?”

  “Not the witch and the others Master. Someone else.”

  “Yep, lots and lots of seriously unwelcome ‘someone else’ too.” Camelle clarifies. “Want to take a look?”

  “Lead on, Macduff.”

  “Lay on…” mutters the secretary and I tip my hat to her, acknowledging my error, before slotting it beside me as we walk outwards.

  We wind our way through the tunnels up towards the surface. On the way we pick up a mixed group of younger vampires and ghouls armed with long rifles and shotguns. The ghouls shuffle, the vampires surge bouncing along the walls.

  We leave the under-dark via a heavy metal grating set next to the sluggish ice choked river, stepping out into the dim red light of morning.

  Our progress from there is swift, moving through the streets around the old Seine, the banks collapsed, partially flooded and stinking from the bodies floating past. The ice at the edges cracks under our feet and more than one foolhardy vampire slips into the water, leaping like a scalded cat as they reemerge.

  After a mile of the fine five or six story ruins the city edges out into lower rise buildings and wider roads.

  “This where the fuckers are?”

  “Near,” his secretary confirms. Camelle signals and the hunting group splits up. Silently spreading out int
o the ruins and ducking into tunnels below.

  He shows me what the problem is.

  There are two armoured figures scouting the outskirts of vampire territory, its edge marked in warning runes. They look like bulkier versions of the Protectorate troopers who escorted me from my burial place, wearing an odd-looking rig of tubes and plates that I assume is some kind of armour. On their shoulders are mounted smaller versions of the lamps which were set up around the memorial that track the movement of their heads. Lines of blue light that make everything they touch fluoresce and the spined bushes and grass wither.

  “Ah.”

  A mechanical bug buzzes overhead.

  “Yeah, you could say that Master Albrecht.” Camelle grimaces showing sharp eye teeth. “Those little darlings are Union MDR troopers. The buzzing is their drones. Low level air cover that call in bigger trouble. And they are looking for something. Any idea what that could be?”

  I ponder. “Well logically that would be me, but that would imply a slightly odd combination of factors. Mr. Johnson Pole would have had to guess where I was going. Which I wouldn’t put past him, as he seems quite an intelligent man. Then he would have had to realise that I might be delayed so he would have had to wait for a week which would show he is a persistent man…”

  I stop. “Or there is a much simpler answer. That they are following something that is telling them where I am.” I reach out with my senses listening for the telltale sounds of a tracking sigil or constant companion. We have had some bad luck recently.

  Camelle mutters into his jacket. “Well guess we just have to deal with the way things are rather than the way we’d want them.” He looks at me. “Question is what you want us to do about it.”

  A third MDR trooper emerges from a building with one of their mechanical boxes held high with which he scans across the buildings closest to the edge of the city and away from us. There’s a burst of static that makes me wince and then the first two go to a four wheeled vehicle with huge wheels and start chattering into a box.