Master In His Tomb

by Jack Holloway

  “That’s a thermal scanner. They use them to pick up ghouls and check what a target is before they decide what ammunition to use.” Camelle curses. “This is shit-sticks. They never come to the city, not since we kicked their butts when they stuck their noses in during the civil war… you don’t need to know about that…. If they’re here now then they think they can take us. Shit. We’re not ready for this.”

  “I assume that you could remove this team if needed? Or we could just back up and they’ll go away? This isn’t the most hospitable place for their kind.”

  Camelle shakes his head. “There’s teams moving around all along the edge of the City. We can back up from this lot as I don’t want them to know we’re here but if they’re willing to trespass they’ll be in force and they’re not going to give up anytime soon.”

  Another of the drones flies overhead, probing into the shadows with a spotlight. We keep our heads down.

  He scratches the back of his neck. “Know what we call those?”

  “Do tell.”

  “Wasps.” He gestures to his team to pull back.

  “Oh, you mentioned those earlier. Any particular reason for the monicker?” I ask. We shuffle back the way we came as the MDR troopers continue their fruitless search.

  “They are a pain in the ass.”

  I laugh. “Lots of things are a pain in the ass.”

  “And if you kill one that attracts a whole swarm that attack you till you’re fucked. The Protectorate soldiers get left half the time. These guys? You kill one you’ll end up knee deep in crawlers’ drones and if you’re really unlucky an agent or two.” He swears. “I need to think. It’s difficult with you here. Clouds everything. Feel like I need permissions in my own house.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “That doesn’t matter. The problem’s what you are.” He barks out a laugh. “Haven’t missed the Masters.”

  “Would you take a suggestion?”

  “I would literally have no choice in the matter Sir, that’s the horror of the situation.”

  I understand. We are a proud species yet we have this inbuilt cringe to those older and of the same line as us. “You should let us conduct our business and then we will be off. It won’t take long. This is a big place and if they haven’t found us yet it would take quite a while for them to even get near your home. We could even make a bit of a production of leaving via the woods.”

  He turns to his secretary. I should really ask her name at some point as it is rude to ignore ghouls. “What do you think Miri?”

  There we go. The ghoul rubs her nose with a thin hand veined in blue.

  “Well, Miri?”

  Camelle is clever. He knows that Miri’s not bound to me by blood and is not affected by the family binding geas that clouds his judgement when I speak. It’s an old trick. Master Marcellus was a second-generation descendant of mine and was renowned for recruiting some of the brightest minds of the Senate, and later the Church, to assist him with dealing with me and my ‘crankier’ ideas.

  It was a good idea but they didn’t last long as he also tended to absent minded snacking when he was considering advice.

  I eventually had to stop that. Independence must have its limits and eating the most intelligent in a group tends to result in a dull, dull future.

  “It’s about as good a plan as any.” Miri plays absentmindedly with the knife at her belt as she speaks. “They seem to be chasing the Master, here. If he goes, the reason they’re here goes. Nothing much for the Union bar him.”

  “Okay. That sounds good.”

  “Though…”

  “What is it Miri?”

  “We should probably make their life a little more difficult to avoid giving the impression we’re holding back? That’ll make them suspicious. Hit a few patrols, make them feel unwelcome… Then we can go back to the day job so to speak once.” She narrows her eyes at me. “Master Albrecht and his jolly band have departed.”

  “Okay. Sounds good. Thanks Miri.” He looks at me. “Master Albrecht, you and your friends should go. You’re obviously welcome to stay as long as you will it but...”

  I smile. “I wouldn’t want you to have any unwanted visitors Camelle, geas or no geas. We will do what we came here to do and then leave you in peace. Clever trick with Miri by the way. I think someday you’ll be quite the Master.”

  He looks sad at this. “Would I want to be? We have to grow up fast here, contrary to what you might think we’re pretty low on the food chain in this world. King of Shitsville. Quite the gig.” He turns to Miri. “Get the family scattered and holed up till he’s finished and break out some of the captives for the young to chase into the Wasps, if we’re lucky they’ll evacuate any survivors. Have a few of the ghouls take pot shots too so they don’t get too comfortable.”

  We go back into the catacombs and I collect my supplies and Emmet for my journey into the old Family headquarters. No reason to risk the lives of the less robust members of my little association.

  I look forward to seeing what my colleagues have made of the Masters’ Sanctum and whether they have any unexpected security over the records section. A battle of wits!

  32

  Investment Grade

  The Union has set up its command post in the condemned settlement of Seis with its broken walls and hollow ghosts, next to the ruins of the settlement Church.

  Direct orders from the Minister. It’s not somewhere that Pole would have chosen to spend his time. Too many memories of better days, when this had been a thriving town and the Union had been expanding out towards the East.

  From his vantage point in the stump of the Church’s tower he can see the burnt out husk of the inn by the walls where he had had a good dinner with Stanley to discuss how to deal with the mess brewing in Paris before it had all fallen to pieces.

  Little had they known that the brew had already boiled and that they were about to get engulfed in the hot stuff.

  Poor old Bertie, he’d worked with the drone operator back at the start when Cali had fallen into the sea. What had been the name of his daughter? They’d never found her, dragged off into the tide of vampires erupting out of Paris most likely.

  Memories. He casts his eyes past the Inn, there, off to the left. The three storey house that they had lived. Good condition, Pole’s assigned it as a billet to a guard squad. Too long past for sentiment to interfere with efficiency.

  There is a constant stream of crawlers and lift drones coming in from the East. The Minister looks like she’s come good with the promise of support.

  What is it that could have made them finally see the light? He doubts it can have been the reappearance of a certain grubby member of the Calais Crowd, despite the song and dance they’d made at the briefing.

  An MDR trooper runs up, part of the original team he borrowed from Stephens, sweating and his helmet straps loose. Dangerous. He makes a note to reprimand the man when he’s said whatever he has to say. He’s with one of the new arrivals, a Ministerial psy-ops Executive Officer, a grey haired woman with sharp eyes that flit from point to point calculating every variable.

  “What do you have for me… Saunders?” That was the man’s name.

  “We have him.”

  Pole nods, slowly. “Clarify ‘him’, if you would please trooper. And sort out the strap on your helmet. Don’t want to have you snapping your neck if you take a head hit.”

  The man sheepishly adjusts his straps to the approved tension and fitting. “The Master, Albrecht. Sir.”

  “Where do we have him?” Too much to hope for that they’d actually caught the old fox. Pole suspects that there will be quite the fight to follow before they can celebrate that.

  “He’s holed up in the catacombs. Near where the library is on the last expedition logs.” Saunders brings up the map on his tablet. “You know it?”

  Pole lets out a long inward sigh, whilst remaining outwardly impassive. “I marked it there.”

  “I see, sir.”

&n
bsp; “So he arrived then.” He nods to the Ministerial aide. “How’s the build up going?”

  “Last teams should be arriving in the next hour.” She has news of her own. Ministerial aides don’t just turn up without something to say.

  “And…”

  “We have found evidence of cult activity nearby.” She pulls up pictures. A skinned body. “Woman, dead at the memorial. Residual arcane activity traces around her and a… um.”

  “Spit it out.”

  “Pony skin. Badly decomposed.” A matching picture. It is indeed a decomposed pony skin.

  “Well all the gang’s here.” Pole dislikes the cultists with a cold intensity. The Vampires are acting on their nature and can do little else. The Cultists? Well there is history there. “Tell the patrols to stay sharp. Any sign of living cultists or cloud trace and send for me and any other agents who’ve arrived.”

  “Could they be working together?” The woman asks. “There’s some indications in his profile that he would consider…”

  “No.” Pole has chased this individual for the past thirty years. He knows him as well as anyone else alive.

  “No?”

  “No.”

  “Your call, Agent.” The Aide’s voice holds some doubt, but it is his call and he will stand by it. If it turns out that he’s wrong he’s sure that he’ll be the first to find out.

  “Agent?”

  “Saunders. You need orders, don’t you?”

  “Sir.”

  Pole updates the map on his own tablet and checks positions. The blockade of the City is all but complete. Some river traffic they haven’t managed to interdict yet, each node of the World Wood including the one just outside the Seis ruins is guarded and mined. No way to sneak past them.

  His reserves are still not sufficient to risk anything more than probes into the city. When the Minister arrives with the remaining teams that will change.

  “We wait, hold perimeter. Keep the Vamps off balance. Shout if they start to fight back and then we draw them out into the open to clear the way to the Library and the Master.” He taps out the orders and passes them over to Saunders. “Patience, we’re nearly there.”

  Saunders salutes, and heads down to the comms post. The Aide has not moved.

  “Can I help you further, Madam?”

  “Just… wanted to say that I’m impressed that you don’t rush in. You’ve been chasing him for so long…”

  Pole remains impassive. “It’s the correct course of action.” Not enough? She’s not leaving. He tries a smile. “No rush.”

  She nods and leaves.

  “Not this time.”

  He watches as a swarm of GEVs appear on the horizon, calculates the balance of forces and updates his records. Mr. Pole is a thorough man.

  33

  Messages from the Dead

  The library is opposite the records centre, both leading off a low ceilinged hall set with arc lights. I have easy access to the first, in fact, anyone has easy access to the library if they can merely survive the ambient conditions. At some point in the past an unknown force has applied some form of explosive entry to the door leaving it flat across the entryway.

  Precise work, no damage to anything bar the locks and the hinges. And the wards have been negated in a series of negatory strokes which remind me of Mr. Pole and his iron magic.

  The library, of course, can wait. It is where the message awaits me, I’m sure. And I have other business first.

  The Council records are a different matter and are the focus of my attention. Merely standing here is making me queasy. The wards set about are specifically attuned to my existence, you could almost say that I am persona non grata and that some tricksy amateurs have attempted to use the entire weight of the magical universe to avert my presence.

  Try to keep me out of something and I will want to see what’s inside. The best knowledge is always occulted.

  It is my own fault. I half-heartedly curse my own stupidity in trying to falsify the records at all whilst I test the room’s defences. Powerful, clumsy, undoubtedly enough to stop me were I alone.

  I have planned ahead. I am the sea and they are a temporary impediment to my progress.

  “Think you can get me into the records section, Emmet old chap.” I mime a hefty fist crashing into a wall next to the nondescript plaque declaring this door to lead to the ‘Council Administrative Records Chamber’. In French.

  “Not a problem, Albie.” And with that, my Golem proceeds to make a mockery of all the protections put in place by the Council and simply knocks a hole in the wall. My get has always lacked imagination.

  There is an ominous groan from above us as the millions of tonnes of ‘Paris’ and its substrate above us, redistributes itself across the supporting structure. “Ominous,” ventures my companion.

  Perhaps another approach would have been…

  The groaning stops. I pat the Golem on his stony bicep. “Thank you, my good man!”

  “Always happy to assist, Master Albrecht.”

  Battle of minds, successfully won I step inside my newest conquest as the restrained energies that had held watch for centuries scatter into nothingness. The fact my conquest is a room full of filing cabinets and terminals lessens my victory not one jot. I need to know.

  And a red button herein, labelled ‘don’t press’ in fine cursive English. Intriguing.

  ————————————

  Button pressed and I have the message I was not seeking at this point. It is from Serah. It takes the form of a near-lifelike scene playing out across the room like a theatre at which I am the lead actor. It feels as if I am surrounded by a ghostly echo of a world that I never experienced. It is sufficiently intriguing that I delay my search for the trial records and forgive her for putting this delectable morsel into my path.

  The time frame must have been immediately before her last stand and subsequent death. Armed men and women rush around in the background, loading weapons, slipping on ceramic armour and head sets with red dot targets. Shadows stand around the walls, leaning against the filing cabinets, watching.

  Serah is dressed as she was in my vision of her death, blocks of body armour strapped to a uniform, and a pistol at her belt. She looks tired and strained, for an immortal being she has managed the impossible and aged in the manner of a human, with lines around her eyes and grey streaks to her hair. They suit her. She is injured, there is a splint holding one of her arms close against her body.

  It is her painting hand and I feel a moment of regret for everything that has been taken away from the world with her death, despite the Colonel’s ungallant comments as to her talent. When she was young…

  She stands opposite me now, the faintest flicker reminding me that this is not real, and I reach out to touch her cheek. My hand passes through the apparition. And so I stand in an administrative storage centre, and wait for the truth.

  I remember the moment I met Serah, watching her paint from a distance next to Master Hermia, her sponsor. Her hand dextrous and her choice of pigments and mixing, masterful. I knew immediately that she would be the sort of person to lead humanity into a golden age. A light against the shadows.

  The chair she stands beside in the vision is a pile of broken wood and cloth fragments in the now. All the physical elements dissolving into entropy besides their spectral companions bar the resistant filing cabinets of shining metal which remain as they were.

  The impression of lost time is heightened by the absence of sound, Serah’s mouth moving as she stares at a point in space which I choose to occupy.

  She seems to notice the error and shouts at a ghostly figure lingering at a station of some kind which is not present in the now. The woman’s hands move and the world around me erupts into sound of muffled chaos, projecting from hidden speakers. She thanks the assistant and the memory of her husky voice is stitched back into the now.

  “Albie. I’d say long time no see but I cannot see you. I think I can assume that it’s
you standing there. The button, where we set up this message. The fact you’re the only person who could possibly have an interest in breaking into a heavily guarded and personally warded area marked ‘Council Administrative Records’ over our famous Library or the Armoury or any number of store rooms stocked with the best arcana and weapons we could produce scattered around the Sanctum.”

  “Priorities.” I caution the spectre.

  “So I’ll assume it’s you Albie. And I’ll call your visage to mind as if you were truly standing there as I speak. Some of our peers had hoped that the war going on outside would disturb you from your sleep and that you would ride into the rescue to save us all from the long night that has descended. Or that we could at least all go together. I knew that wasn’t going to happen. You always hated horses and I think you will want to teach us a lesson. And there isn’t much time, the Russian Bear is at the door and he’s pissed. If you’re planning a last minute rescue you’re cutting it a bit fine.”

  She laughs into her hand for a time. There’s a hysteria to her I find horrifying. It is sufficient to draw one of the shadows standing around the walls close to offer her comfort. I recognise her state of mind from previous observation, A mother who is watching her children run from a monster that she cannot stop.

  I wince. There’s a memory there.

  “Though you’re watching this. Unless we’re together, in which case I’m sure I’ll turn this off, the rescue did not happen. So you will have awoken, and walked the world to get here, and broken the wards crafted to stop you, out of sheer bad tempered orneriness just to find out what we’d written about you or who stood by you at the trial.” The ghost of a smile. “I’m sorry to say I had those records moved to the library, it’s a switcheroo.”

  “Damn it, Serah.” She’s going to say I’m predictable. I know it.

  “You’re predictable Albie, and you’re so predictable I can even tell that you’re pulling that face that makes it look like you’re furtively sucking a lemon. It’s hard wired in your nature. If you’re told you can’t do something you’ll move heaven and earth to do it.”