Bad Cow

by Andrew Hindle

  “Oh, so you speak – right – are you, were you the one who picked up Laetitia from the church, then?” Tommo asked.

  “Nah,” Troy said. “That was Canon.”

  Tommo’s stomach was suddenly a bag of ice. “Canon?”

  “Oh, you know him too, huh?” Troy said brightly. “Boy, you know a bunch, don’t you? Well then. Before he gets here, let’s find out what else you know.”

  TOMMO ACCEPTS A VERY BRIEF ROUND OF APPLAUSE

  There was a yellow post-it note stuck on the inside of Canon’s coffin lid when he awoke at sunset. He sighed as he rose, peeled off the note, and closed the coffin lid. Troy Haussman delighted in doing things like this while Canon slept.

  The coffin was still a matter of convenience for Canon, who was still in the process of arranging proper accommodation for himself and Laetitia in Fremantle. Until such time as he could sleep in a well-sheltered bed, the coffin would have to do – and at least he could keep it on-site in the basement of Das Wampyr’s.

  He looked down at the note.

  “Upstairs in Lateesha’s room,” he read dryly, “with freind,” he sighed. I am a minion to an illiterate Demon.

  He took a few minutes to get dressed, then ascended to the upper basement where he’d temporarily stored Laetitia’s coffin.

  “Ah, there you are,” Troy said as Canon stepped into the room. “Good morning sunshine.”

  Canon took in the scene. Laetitia was awake, crouching by her coffin and watching everything with wary, darting eyes. The smell of blood was thick in the room, and there were traces of it drying on the rubber matting. It would all have to be replaced. Evidently, Laetitia had awakened, and been let out of her coffin, and had fed. He was sorry he hadn’t been present to help her – the first few times were extremely distressing.

  Her prey, a wild-eyed young man with stubbly jowls and a T-shirt slightly too small for his beer belly, was huddled on the floor between the coffin and the doorway, where Troy stood with his arms folded next to an open bag that appeared to contain a cricket set.

  The human was sobbing quietly, although he seemed to be unharmed. Of course, one’s first feeding was even more distressing for the food than it was for the feeder, but the physical damage at least would be gone. He’d been hale and hearty enough to survive the process, which was why Vampires usually went for weaker specimens or killed their victims afterwards, except in cases where they could keep and farm a small group of human cattle.

  Canon had run the occasional farm, but they almost always ended up being more trouble than they were worth. Left to their own devices, humans farmed themselves anyway. You didn’t need to take the risk.

  Evidently, whatever the Demon had done to the human was the cause of his continuing anguish.

  “Dare I ask?” Canon said wearily.

  “Canon, this is Thomas Chamberlain,” Troy said, “also known as Thomas Smith, also known as Tommo,” he lapsed into a ghastly approximation of an Australian accent. “Tommo, Canon.”

  “Charmed,” Canon said. Tommo just whimpered.

  “He came sneaking into the club this afternoon,” Troy explained, nudging the bag of sporting goods with his foot, “looking for evidence of Imago Vampires. His words. Sort of.”

  “I see.”

  “He found Laetitia, and got a bit more than he bargained for,” Troy grinned. “But you’ll never guess how he put it all together and came looking for you.”

  He’s a friend of the Angel’s, Canon thought. “How?”

  “He’s a friend of the Angel’s,” Troy crowed. “Barry fucking Dell. They used to play cricket together, and eat crumpets and shit.”

  “I don’t know where he is,” the human suddenly bleated, and started to weep. “I’d tell you, I’d tell, I don’t know.”

  “Yeah, he doesn’t know shit,” Troy said idly. “They knew all about you, apparently Barry got sent to Sydney to kill you and they think it was some kind of test, but he doesn’t know anything else. He honestly thought you were dead.”

  Canon was a little shaken, even considering his experience with interrogation techniques. He was almost certain the Demon hadn’t touched the sobbing human, and he didn’t like to think about how he had so thoroughly broken the man. “To be fair, I thought I was dead too,” he said, and paused. “What do you intend to do with him?”

  “I dunno,” Troy said with a shrug. “Kill him? Keep him here for Laetitia to snack on? Play a spot of goddamn cricket?”

  “Alright,” Canon said calmly, “but this is what we call a low-risk, low-benefit victim. Left alone, he’s just going to want to get out of here.”

  “He’s right,” the human said abjectly, rising from his huddled position but keeping his head bowed, “it’s true, it’s true, I just want to go, I won’t tell, I’ll never tell.”

  “Shut up, I’m trying to save your life,” Canon snapped. “But,” he went on, turning imploringly back to Troy, “he is not without friends. He is part of a network. He knows about Laetitia, about the Angel. And yet, there is nobody in authority they can turn to. The drawbacks of killing him outweigh the risks of letting him–”

  Troy clapped his hands once, the palms cupped so it made a hollow pop sound. At the same moment, even though the human had been kneeling several metres away and there had been no physical contact, the human’s head smashed in a flat detonation of skull-fragments and brains. It was as if the Demon had brought his hands together with immense force – and possibly holding a rock in each one – on either side of Tommo’s skull.

  The slaying was almost silent. Aside from the pop of Troy clapping his hands, the sickening crack of the skull imploding and the low, damp sound of the body’s bowels and bladder releasing, there was no sound. Half a second later, the carcass slumped to the floor and a soft patter of wet fragments rained down in a fan over Canon and Laetitia.

  “Sorry,” Troy said, “you were saying something about drawbacks and risks outweighing something?”

  KARMA FAIRIES

  “Why,” Little Phil demanded as soon as he got out of his car, “are we here?”

  Seam, already standing outside the shop with Nutter, held out his hands in a placating gesture. “I know,” he said, “I know, but I’m acting on instructions.”

  “I bloody hope so,” Phil grumbled. “What if someone sees us?”

  Nutter chuckled, but his heart didn’t seem to be in it. “Do you think this is the first time three grown men have gone into this shop together?” he asked.

  They stood and looked dubiously at the façade.

  Karma Fairies, the colourful spirally sign read. Crystals, Aromatherapy, Tarot. Underneath this, in different paint and with squashed-up writing so it would fit, +acupuncture had been added later.

  “Fuck me,” Little Phil said.

  “What’s tacupuncture?” Nutter asked.

  “I think that’s an ‘and’,” Seam replied.

  “Fuck me,” Little Phil repeated.

  “I should probably warn you,” Seam went on, “um, alright, so I’m just going to say it – we’re here to speak to the Archangel Gabriel,” all three of the others turned to stare at him, and seemed content to continue doing so for the foreseeable future. “Okay,” Seam went on. “He’s Nails’s boss. Sort of. We met him the first night Nails came back and I drove him to the church. Nails asked me not to mention him. It’s all a bit much.”

  “All a bit much,” Nutter repeated blankly.

  “Sorry,” Seam said. “I just – look, okay, he – he just doesn’t look like a … just don’t be freaked out, alright? He was made into an Angel a long time ago, so he looks kinda primitive.”

  “What, like a caveman?” Little Phil asked, eyeing the shop window with interest. The shop window was crowded with hemispherical stones full of amethysts and mechanical golden cats which swung their paws backwards and forwards as though knocking on an invisible door, rolling their eyes from side to side.

  “I – yeah, I guess,” Seam stammered. “Kinda. Just–�
��

  “Just why are we at this bloody shop?” Little Phil insisted.

  “Because it was, uh, because it was consecrated a few years ago,” Seam said, “um, a Buddhist something-or-other performed a ritual so they could do some sort of meditation or ceremonies–”

  “Maybe tacupuncture?” Nutter asked innocently.

  “Yeah, maybe, shut up,” Seam said. “Anyway it’s not a church but it counts as holy ground so Angels can hang out here during daylight hours. Um, he came to my place last night and told me to meet him here.”

  “Fuck me,” Phil said yet again.

  “What’s wrong with the church?” Nutter asked.

  “Not holy ground anymore,” Seam said, and shrugged. “That’s all he said. Apparently none of the churches and things are consecrated anymore, something happened to them. There’s a couple of really obscure little places that Gabriel knew about, like this. But most of them are gone.”

  “‘Gone’?” Nutter said. “We drove past the church.”

  “Maybe you stupid dying fuckers can come in here and ask me,” the gruff, slurred voice of the Archangel came from the shadowy doorway.

  Phil and Nutter froze, staring at the silhouette. Seam looked nervously up and down the narrow curve of the street, but there was nobody around. The three of them hurried into Karma Fairies.

  “I assume the shopkeeper’s passed out from Angel overdose?” Seam asked, pleased to have at least a certain amount of prior information.

  “Yes, you’re very perceptive,” Gabriel grunted. “Flip that thing over to say ‘Closed’, and shut the damn door.”

  “That’s the Archangel Gabriel?” Nutter whispered as Seam locked the shop. “And what the Hell is Angel overdose?”

  “It smells like an incense truck ran over a pot dealer in here,” Phil remarked.

  Gabriel barked a laugh. “I like him.”

  “After too much time with an Angel, people sort of pass out,” Seam explained. “It happened to me on our first night with Nails.”

  “You held out pretty well, though,” Gabriel congratulated him. “I had to give you a little push.”

  “I just guessed it would have happened to the shopkeeper in here,” Seam went on, “since Archangels are even more powerful.”

  “It did,” Gabriel said, “yesterday. Today I conviced her to stay home.”

  “How did you deal with customers?” Seam asked.

  “Politely but firmly,” Gabriel replied. “Is that really what you want to ask?”

  “Where have you been?” Seam asked.

  “I want to ask if we’re going to get Angel poisoning,” Nutter said, raising his hand nervously. He and Little Phil were staring at Gabriel.

  “You’ll be fine,” Gabriel told him. “You’ve been exposed and desensitised steadily over the past couple of months,” the heavy brows came down and deep, bright eyes fixed on Seam as if it was his fault. “Apparently. So, what, he told all of you everything?”

  “He didn’t tell us everything,” Seam protested. “He didn’t tell us where you went.”

  “He didn’t know where I went,” Gabriel growled.

  “He didn’t tell us about you at all,” Nutter said.

  “Probably the first sensible decision he made,” the Archangel retorted. He stumped deeper into the shop, picking his way through stands of dreamcatchers and crystal balls and rings in the shape of bird skulls. Seam and the other Sheepbreezers followed. “I … left the country for a bit,” the Archangel said eventually, “checking some things. When I realised what was happening … it took me a while to fly back.”

  “What is happening?” Seam asked. “Where’s Barry?”

  Gabriel sighed, but didn’t answer immediately. He found his way to a chair and flung himself into it, and squinted up at the still-staring Sheepbreezers. “Sit down, you giant pink bastards,” he said, and sighed again. “I’m sorry,” he went on, “I really don’t like humans much. But I’m not exactly spoiled for choice these days.”

  “Sorry,” Nutter said.

  Gabriel waved a massive hand. “I’m not really what you people think of when you hear about Archangels,” he said. “I’m not holy or devout. My name’s not even Gabriel, not really. I mean, it was the name I was given, so long ago that it’s more my name than the names of most mountains … I don’t really have an actual name, truth to tell. When I was alive, when I was a human being, human beings didn’t have names. Human beings weren’t even human beings.

  “I died, and was glorified, like your pal Barry, sometime during the Great Ice Age – one of the Great Ice Ages, anyway. It’s difficult to be all that specific when it comes to dates. Things were different then.”

  “Finding holy ground to hole up on must have been…” Seam said, but Gabriel shook his head.

  “No ground was holy,” he said. “Or all of it was,” the chest-high Archangel squinted up at them with sharply intelligent eyes – an intelligence, Seam thought, that had built itself up over aeons, probably from something quite run-of-the-mill, perhaps even something purely animal, heightened by the knowledge and the pain that all Angels carried. The pain of being cast out of Heaven.

  Seam wondered if Barry’s eyes would look like that in ten thousand years. And what Gabriel would be like then. The thought made him cold all over, and Seam suddenly knew why Angels were solitary creatures. He shuddered at the strength the Archangel had, to travel the world keeping tabs on its six lieutenants.

  Nutter was still frowning. “So you were made into an Angel–”

  “It’s called glorification,” Gabriel said.

  “Alright, you were glorified, what, about ten thousand years ago, when humans were … uh, I want to say homo erectus?”

  “Homo habilis,” Seam put in.

  “Watch it,” Gabriel growled.

  “Sorry. But it was a bit more than ten thousand years ago,” Seam said, giving Gabriel an apologetic look. “Wasn’t it?”

  “Yeah,” Gabriel grumbled. “Ten thousand years, give or take, is when humans began to settle on Earth in large numbers.”

  “Whoa,” Nutter said, “so we really were seeded onto this planet by aliens?”

  “You seeded yourselves onto this world,” Gabriel said with another short laugh, “and you haven’t stopped seeding yourselves ever since. There were already primates here when you came,” he squinted at Seam. “Homo habilis was already gone by then, I’m pretty sure. And lucky for them.”

  “So … humans interbred with the primates that were here already?” Nutter asked, wide-eyed.

  “Can you even doubt it?” Gabriel snorted. “It’s getting humans to stop breeding that’s the trick. The churches have tried, with varying degrees of disastrous results.

  “There’s a big morning-after blurry patch where homo erectus, Neanderthals and modern humans are concerned,” Gabriel went on with malicious relish. “All we really know for sure is that you handsome fuckers stumbled out the far end with your shoes in one hand and your other arm gnawed off at the elbow,” he gestured illustratively at the current assemblage of homo sapiens.

  “Is this random abuse getting us closer to finding out where Nails is?” Little Phil inquired, “or why we’re in this hippie perfume shop?”

  Gabriel grinned enormously. “I really like him,” he said.

  “So what’s going on?” Seam asked.

  “There’s a Demon in Fremantle,” Gabriel said without further preamble. “A new one. Not one of the two originals. We – I think it appeared at the same time Barry did, like a … a byproduct of the glorification. And no,” he went on, “a Demon doesn’t usually appear just because an Angel does. We’re not that sort of binary opposition. I’m not sure why it happened this time. I have my suspicions but we don’t have time to get into it now.

  “When I found out, I came back as quickly as I could. The lack of holy ground delayed me and complicated things, but it’s a risk we face with Demons. At least this one is green. It’s a drawback and a benefit,” Gabriel weighed
his gnarled hands on either side of his chest. “Benefit, he doesn’t seem to know shit, so he’s making slips the older Demons wouldn’t make. Drawback, he’s performing acts of war that the older Demons are too constrained from performing, and they get to say ‘hey, it’s not our fault, he’s new’,” the Archangel grunted.

  “Do Demons actually say things like ‘hey, it’s not our fault’?” Seam asked.

  “Not really,” Gabriel admitted, “but that’s the general impression. Anyway, the point is, Demons kill holy ground when they set foot on it. Turn it the same as everywhere else. And this new Demon has been doing it a lot, specifically around here. It’s just as well the two Demons we had on Earth don’t get around much, because it’s a huge job to rededicate dead holy ground. And it’s a big problem that the new Demon’s doing it, because without holy ground we have nowhere to spend our daylight hours.”

  “Why haven’t the old Demons soiled all the churches ages ago?” Nutter asked.

  “Just the way it is,” Gabriel replied. “Demons move around a lot when they’re young, then for various reasons they settle down and sort of ulcerate. They can still move fast when they need to, though. Just sitting still doesn’t make them harmless.”

  “And if you can’t get onto holy ground during daylight?” Nutter continued, fiddling with a pewter figure of a wizard holding a crystal ball. “Nails never really told us.”

  “Nails never experienced it,” Gabriel said. “We go dormant, waiting for a set of conditions that can no longer arise, for various reasons,” he reached out and grabbed the pewter figure from Nutter’s hand, practically from across the room, without getting up from his seat. “And you break it, you bought it,” he added.

  “So not even rededicating the holy ground can make the Angel okay again?” Seam asked. He was already certain this is what had happened to Barry.

  “Not really,” the Archangel said. “Returning the Angel to some other holy ground in time – ideally a really short time – and doing some healing ju-ju can do the trick. But it’s a big maybe. And rededicating is a bastard to do. Usually, you just wind up with an Angelic vegetable.”