Ibenus (Valducan series)

by Seth Skorkowsky

  "We don't have any practice swords for her," he said, glancing to the racks of weapons mounted against the walls. "So we'll be using other ones to train. Still, you must become familiar with her."

  "All right."

  Allan tightened his jaw and offered her the sword. If he hesitated as Victoria accepted it she made no response.

  She bounced it in her hand. "It's lighter than I would have thought."

  "She's a hacker," he said, forcing a calm tone. He loathed anyone holding her. He felt naked without the blade but…Victoria was his student. Better get used to it. "More like an axe than a sword. The first six inches there past the handle before the blade bows, it's not sharp at all. For a good swing you can grab the haft there," he mimed the movement, terribly conscious Ibenus wasn't in his hands, "and bring her down double-handed."

  "I see," she said, squeezing the haft in her off hand.

  "Most of the time, though, it's just one handed."

  Victoria twirled the khopesh one side, then the other and hacked at some slow moving invisible enemy.

  "So we'll have to train you with both swords and axes to get the full effect."

  She spun, decapitating her imaginary foe, then took Ibenus in both hands, hacking down. "Am I making you uncomfortable?" She watched him in the mirror's reflection.

  "N…yeah." Allan sighed a breath. "I've never let anyone touch her before. It, uh, will take some getting used to."

  "Never?"

  He shook his head.

  "Because she's your wife, sort of?"

  "Sort of."

  She nodded, the amused grin melting away. "So why me?"

  "You're my student. To train you I have to trust you with her."

  "Thank you. I didn't realize…what that meant. I'll take care of her." She rolled it in her hand feeling the balance but without the playful air she'd had. "How do you make her blink?"

  "I can't make her," he said, moving behind Victoria to adjust her grip. "That's her decision. I just have to trust that she will when I need her. But she won't do it for you."

  "Why not?"

  He guided her arm through a swing. "Holy weapons only work for their protector."

  "So as long as you're around…"

  "Don't be getting ideas, now."

  She chuckled. "Never crossed my mind. Now that you mention it however…"

  Allan smiled. "Then if you plan to bump me off and run off with Ibenus, let me show you how to use her."

  "Good plan."

  They practiced for over an hour, trading possession of the khopesh until Allan no longer counted how many times he had relinquished it. They moved through routines with wooden sabers, repeating the steps like dancers.

  "I think this'll do for tonight," Allan said finally.

  Victoria practiced the one-two step, wooden sword before her. "Are you sure?"

  "Yeah. Got another run early in the morning."

  "Oh. There's that."

  "Always is."

  They strolled back upstairs, chatting and walking a little slower than necessary. Allan rested a hand on Ibenus' handle as he went, enjoying the comfort of her back as his side. He'd need to clean off the fingerprints before bed, but that was nothing much. Truth was that he enjoyed cleaning her, polishing the bronze to a shine. She'd been in the hands of another. It was going to require some getting used to. He wondered if he ever would.

  "Thank you for today," Victoria said as they reached her bedroom. "I, uh, was a little worried how my first full day was going to go."

  "Not a problem." He smiled. "I said they'd get used to you. Definitely won some points with Sam. Wild that you knew each other…in a way."

  "Not exactly on the best terms, though."

  He shrugged. "You showed her the backroom boards. Trust me, that made a difference."

  Victoria looked down at her feet. "One battle at a time, right?" She met his eyes. There, somewhere behind the gold and green something lurked. Sadness? Fear?

  "That's right." Allan squeezed her hand, assuring her it was all right. "Just give—" When had he taken hold of her hand?

  Victoria looked down the same moment as him as they both released their grips. Did she take his first or had he taken hers?

  "I, ah, was saying, just take `em one at a time. They'll get used to you."

  "Yeah." She sniffed, her lips moving as if trying to wipe off any expression of discomfort. "Well, thanks again for today. I, uh, I suppose I need to send my mum a message. Let her know I'm okay. Thanks for letting me have my phone back."

  "No problem at all. I'll fetch you in the morning."

  "Bright and early." She opened her door and slipped inside without turning back.

  Allan stood there for a moment, trying to figure out if he'd just fucked up. With a grunt, he squeezed Ibenus' grip and turned toward his own room. Let's get you cleaned up, Love.

  Episode 159: Amiens pt2 -They Strike Again

  "Hey, cryptozoologists," TommyD says as the intro music fades down. He sits at a blonde wood table, one hand atop the other and a blank redbrick wall behind him. A trimmed sandy beard covers narrow cheeks. He wears a short-brimmed fedora the color of swamp water. Black Wayfarers rest atop a long nose, masking his eyes behind black glass. "Three weeks ago, I publicly posted a video about the Bird Man of Amiens."

  A still image emerges from the corner of the screen, filling the frame: A dark cell phone picture of an enormous avian head emerging from water, a tied boat behind it giving it a sense of scale. Front-facing hawk-like eyes stare at the photographer like twin golden moons, a mixed expression of surprise and hate on its curiously human face.

  "The Bird Man has been a local legend in the area for more than fifty years, garnering nearly a dozen photographs, half of which appear staged." Another frame expands from the other corner, pushing the still image away until they're side by side. A shaky video plays inside the left rectangle of a concrete bike trail whisking by, illuminated by a single light. "But this recent shot, alongside a cyclist's close encounter, is clearly the same creature." The camera wheels to the left to show a bird-headed man, a limp white terrier in its claws. The creature gives a silent scream and moves toward the camera and the frame turns back to the trail, jostling side to side as it races away. The camera looks back once to see the beast standing on the trail far behind, the dog forgotten.

  "The locals have nicknamed their resident cryptid Henri. And until the cyclist video, no one has ever taken Henri seriously. Since my episode aired, it's been viewed twelve thousand times." The screen returns to TommyD, elbows on the table and fingers laced before him. "Several monster seekers have reached out to me through private channels, searching for Henri. Cameras were set up and we started trying to narrow down where Henri's lair might be. We were confident that we'd narrowed it down to a three kilometer stretch along the River Somme." He draws a breath, posture straightening. "Two nights ago there was a fire in one of the houses along that same stretch."

  The screen cuts to footage of firefighters and police working around a black and smoldering ruin of a house in the early light of morning. "Authorities have confirmed the body of a man was found inside. While it's too early to tell if the fire was accidental, the contact that sent me this video also told me that a wildlife camera that they had mounted in the area has also gone missing. While this might seem like a simple coincidence to some, the events in Amiens only point to a pattern we've seen before."

  The video footage changes to another burning house lit red and orange against a black sky. Blue and white lights flash against a backdrop of oily smoke as silhouette men race across the screen, hoses in hand. It switched again to a burned-out two-story warehouse, then to a farmhouse, each one with a date and location emblazoned across the bottom.

  "It's no coincidence that house fires seem to always follow sightings, and then the sightings mysteriously end. So the question is, was the person, or people, responsible for those arsons the same that came to Ami
ens? Who wants to hide the truth from us?"

  The image of a great gothic cathedral slides into view, its white stone facade encrusted with statues and heavy, elaborate reliefs. "Is it mere coincidence that Amiens is home to a bishop? A bishop that could command men of faith? Secret men the Vatican claims don't exist?"

  A black and white photo dissolves out from the church. Two men step from a round-nosed black sedan. They wear the dark suits and collars of priests. The older one peers somewhere off camera, his white hair only a wisp beneath a black hat. The younger one, a tall man built like a war hero with a broad chest and strong jaw looks directly at the distant camera, hard eyes displeased. His hair is slicked back and shiny like plastic. In his hand he holds a sheathed sword, its scabbard decorated with glinting metal. A label along the bottom reads, 'Pisa - 1963' in capitalized red stencil font like some classified military document.

  A color image slides down from the top. Again two men in somber suits and white collars. The first, a younger man with a ruddy tan and short-cropped curls walks through a bright green stucco doorway. The end of something long protrudes from his hand, mostly concealed by the door. Behind him, an older man with thin, slicked hair and a familiar strong jaw peers over his shoulder, cold eyes focused on the photographer across the street. He carries the same sheathed sword in his hand with the casual tension of a Spaghetti Western gunslinger. The blood red stenciled date reads, 'Buenos Aires - 1985'.

  "No, my friends, this is no coincidence. The pattern is all too familiar for us to ignore. The Vatican, it appears, has once again denied us the truth. Mark my words, we won't be seeing Henri again. Until next time, TommyD, signing out."

  Chapter Ten

  "Have you seen this?" Victoria asked.

  "What did you find?" Allan looked over from his own monitor, where a Lithuanian news report was playing a video of some creature that looked to him more like a sick bear than the monster it had claimed.

  "Looks like one of those screamers in Manchester," she said.

  "Where?" He pushed out his seat and leaned in beside her, momentarily forgetting his self-imposed two foot rule. After last night's awkward hand-holding, he didn't want to make her uncomfortable or lend any validity to Master Turgen's accusation that Allan's attraction had clouded his judgment.

  "Paris." She backed the clip to the beginning. A stylized white comet chased its tail as the video re-buffered.

  Allan bit his lip and shared a moment's glance with Sam still seated at the next workstation. "Paris was one of the first places we encountered a mantismere."

  Victoria looked up at him, the inner corners of her eyebrows raised, crinkling her forehead. "Mantismere?"

  "Means mantis mother. It's what attacked you in Manchester."

  "Mantismere," she repeated, seeming to ponder it. "Appropriate name."

  Sam cocked a moment's a smirk at Allan. He'd wanted to call it Spearbug but Luc, being the one that killed the first one they found, overruled him and decided the name.

  The video started, its quality and framing obviously from a cell phone at night. A pair of young men casually stood, cutting up, before a light-colored wall of large bricks. One wore a tight, open neck T-shirt and jeans, his skinny arms decorated with tattooed swirls. He held a plastic soda bottle in one hand, its label torn away. The man beside him was laughing around a cigarette, his red-brown hair and blue buttoned shirt too perfectly disheveled to be accidental. Wind crackled through the microphone, drowning out men's voices as the tattooed man was imparting some evidently funny story, emphasized with exaggerated expressions. The video shook as the camera owner's laughter drowned out even the wind's noise.

  The tattooed storyteller swigged his bottle and continued his monologue, his hand beside his face as if wrestling some invisible ball. The smoker beside him abruptly ceased his laughing and stiffened, eyes locked on something off to the side. The camera lingered long enough for him to slap his friend's arm before it whirled into the direction the man was looking. Something moved along the edge of an alley toward them, maybe half a foot high. Victoria inhaled sharply as a white doll's face emerged from the shadows, ghostlike with ink-black eyes.

  "Oh yeah," Allan said, his voice a mixture of dread and excitement, as a faint baby's wail came through the computer speakers.

  A pair of pincers unfolded from its oval mouth as the screamer scuttled into view. The mewling grew louder. The camera jerked upward to see a second one crawl from a broken second floor window, then back down to the baby-faced bug closing in. There was a scream and the plastic, labelless bottle sailed toward it. The screamer leapt up and landed against the wall, four feet up, as the bottle hit the ground, spraying its contents. The camera whirled around, everything shaking and spinning as the men fled, shouting and blubbering.

  "That's it," Victoria said as the video went black.

  Allan peered at the bottom on the frame. "Uploaded this morning. Over two hundred views in the last three hours."

  "That's going to go up fast," Sam said.

  Allan scanned the video description. "Where exactly was this?"

  "Just says Paris," Victoria answered. "Five nights ago."

  Allan's pulse quickened. "All right. Let's study the video. The building. What we see of the street. Search for other sightings, see if we can narrow it down."

  Sam rolled back to her station. "On it, boss."

  "How did you find this?"

  "Link posted on Cryptozoo," Victoria said.

  Of course it was. This was just getting better and better. "We'll need to run a few Doubting Thomases in the thread, see if we can steer interest away before someone wanders in there looking for a monster."

  Victoria looked up at him, her face so close they could kiss. "Can't we use them?"

  Allan stood, resetting the distance rule. "How?"

  "The three of us searching Paris versus a hundred of them. We could find it faster if we let them help."

  "No." He shook his head. "We can't afford someone going there with a camera in hopes of the next viral video or breakthrough discovery."

  "We could warn them off it."

  Allan cocked his brow. "And you think they'll listen? How many times is a volcano about to blow or a hurricane about to land and some git decides to go there to check it out?"

  "If they knew what it was they'd stay back."

  "No," Allan said. "They never do. Cryptid clubs are older than the internet. It's always the same. You can't tell me that that this TommyD guy and his flunkies won't go charging in there, and warning them to stay away will only drive them harder."

  She opened her hands in surrender. "All right. Just an idea."

  "That's fine." Allan slid back into his chair and clicked his mouse. "I want you to think of new approaches. I'm just saying why that one isn't feasible." He pulled up the video on his screen and watched it again. "Sam, see if you can grab some stills from this and edit them. Blow `em up, point out errors. Maybe draw in a little line when that thing jumps, make it look like a wire."

  "I can search for the location or I can Photoshop footage. Can't do both."

  "I need you to." Allan checked the clock. He needed the other Librarians. Master Sonu would be awake, afternoon his time. But Matt and Uwe were in Chile and probably wouldn't be up for a several hours. He began composing the emails to let them know what was going on.

  Victoria's mouse wheel whirred in little clicks as she scrolled through the forum. "Speaking of TommyD, you have a chance to look at his latest video yet?"

  Allan shook his head. "Not yet."

  "I did," Sam said. "Blames the Vatican for taking out the tengu. Posted some pics of Father Gaze."

  Allan paused mid-type. "He even around still?"

  The corner of her lip curled in a shrugging motion. "Doubt it. Last image was from the Eighties."

  "Who's Father Gaze?" Victoria asked.

  "Priest," Allan said, finishing the message. "Last we saw of him was fifteen years ago."<
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  "He always knew if you were taking his picture," Sam said. "Fucking creepy."

  "So he's not with the Order?" Victoria asked.

  "Oh no," Allan laughed. "He's one of the Vatican's boys. You ever hear how the Catholic Church has a group of exorcists they dispatch when one of the churches claims to have a serious possession? They'll show up, banish the demon and leave?"

  She nodded.

  "Well these guys are like that but more like the SAS. Demon hunters with the full power of the church at their back."

  "And they have holy weapons?" Victoria motioned her head toward the orphan vault behind them, its door wide. Allan had opened it hoping that maybe one of the weapons might make a bond. Sam was unlikely, as she'd been Orlovski's student for years; Amballwa probably had her marked as his replacement by now. But Victoria was technically still fair game if one of the orphans decided her worthy. Keeping her in their view might help that along.

  "Of course." Allan opened a link to the Creature Sighting Network, a smaller forum than Cryptozoo, but far more reliable. He started scrolling for posts about Paris. "The church has gathered thousands of artifacts over the centuries. Few legitimate holy weapons among them. Just a matter of time before one of them called to a priest or nun dusting off the relics."

  "And…we don't work with them?"

  Allan's mouth tightened into a grin. He wondered if she even noticed she was calling the Order we instead of you. "No, we don't."

  "Why not?"

  He shrugged. "We've never been too keen on working together. No bad blood that I know of. At least there hasn't been in two hundred years. They mind their business, we mind ours. We're all fighting the same fight so no need to get in each other's way."

  "So…if the Valducans aren't the only hunters, how many are there?"

  "Well, there's the Exorcists, us, the Takaira Clan operating in Japan, but they only have one weapon, two independent hunters that we know of, but we suspect there's a third one creeping around Liberia somewhere." Not finding anything on CSN, he moved on to another website. "If we can find them, we'll offer them a place, or at least help. Sometimes they join, sometimes not. We try to keep an eye on them, anyway."