The Brothers Cabal

by Jonathan L. Howard

  ‘That glass wasn’t enough, was it, Horst?’ she said. ‘You must be so very thirsty.’

  He was astride her before he knew it himself. She gasped in surprise at the suddenness of his actions, but then laughed the delighted girlish laugh of getting a long-sought pony for her birthday. He was hardly aware of it; the coldness in his mind was turning to a single icy need and he no longer knew how to control it.

  ‘So eager, aren’t you? So needy…’ She turned her head to expose the vein, coquettishly veiled in skin. ‘Just a little, darling. Just a goblet’s worth. We both need to be ready for tomorrow night.’

  She sighed as the fangs penetrated, and held his head as he drank. She lay, complacent and aware as Horst fed. Beyond the obvious, even an astute onlooker would have been hard put to decide exactly who was taking what from whom.

  Certainly, watching through a small gap where the door to the antechamber had been left ajar, it wasn’t at all clear to Alisha.

  An Interlude

  Johannes Cabal lightly touched the side of his neck. A close examination in good light might have revealed two small scars as from punctures, fractionally paler than the already pale surrounding skin. The gesture was unconscious, but Horst pulled a sour face when he noticed it.

  ‘Once,’ he said. ‘I did that once. And, to be fair, it was at least in part because you were being such an arse.’

  ‘As I recall, I was running away,’ said Cabal, lowering his hand to join the other on the counterpane. ‘In what way does that fit your recollection?’

  ‘You were running away like an arse.’ Horst maintained an aggrieved face for some seconds before giggling.

  ‘You are the least suitable “Lord of the Dead” I can imagine,’ said his brother. ‘Still, this “Ministerium Tenebrae” of yours…’

  ‘Very distinctly not of mine…’

  ‘This conspiracy of darkness, I don’t suppose I should be surprised. They tend to pop up every few centuries when the not-entirely-human of the world finally have enough of being chased around by ubiquitous mobs, all equipped with burning torches and pitchforks as if there’s a retail chain somewhere that supplies all their lynching needs. God knows I’ve had to put up with enough incidents like that in my time. I can almost sympathise with this Ministerium.’

  Horst looked at him askance. ‘Almost?’

  ‘Of course. Except they do a poor job of learning from history. Every time somebody tries to do something like this, it ends in early victories quickly followed by a mass extermination of the supernatural rebels. It’s like that statistical cycle they teach in schools about foxes and rabbits. It serves to shove them back into the misty coils of myth so the nice people can pretend such things never existed.’ He ruminated for a moment. ‘Although this is different. I don’t recall it being backed by human agencies right from its onset, helping the legions of darkness as an investment opportunity. Still, free market capitalism and elemental evil have so much in common, I suppose the marvel is that it’s never happened before. The other interesting detail is that the intention is to make limited gains. To create a new state and defend it instead of just galloping along as a horde, trying to take over the world. That shows foresight and a lot of common sense.’

  Horst’s look grew ever more askance. ‘Does it?’

  ‘Surely a regulated nation of assorted vampires, werewolves, necromancers, warlocks, witches, and the usual bump-in-the-night suspects is better than the alternative? A bogey man who’s a citizen of Teratolia is…’

  ‘A citizen of where?’

  ‘“The Land of Monsters”. You really are weak at classical languages, aren’t you? As I was saying, a monstrous citizen of that shrouded land is, by definition, not under one’s bed. He’s at home, reading the paper, because he has a home. I imagine many governments, specifically the ones far away who wouldn’t be losing any territory, would find that a very equitable solution.’

  Horst shook his head. ‘There’s more to it than I’ve told you so far.’

  ‘I thought there would be.’ Cabal tilted his head back and breathed through his nose as he changed trains of thought at Cognition Junction. ‘Misericorde. Never heard of her. While as a profession, we’re not friendly with one another, we are wary, and that means we tend to be aware of one another’s existences at least. A female necromancer—necromantrix?—is a rare creature indeed. In fact, with the exception of the dead yet delightful Miss Smith, I can think of none who are currently practising. Even she’s more of a witch these days.’

  Horst, however, had caught on to something else in Johannes’s words that attracted his attention. ‘The delightful Miss Smith?’ he asked with a roguish smile. ‘Does my little brother have a crush?’

  Cabal started to deny it, but then instead blushed a little, and a small, perhaps even shy smile appeared on his own face. He leaned towards Horst and said in a lowered voice, ‘She told me where to find the fifth volume of Darian’s Opusculus.’

  ‘Did she now?’ Horst straightened up, his smile broadening. ‘You old dog, you. Sharing occult books is like a dirty weekend to necromancers, isn’t it?’ He looked at the clock on Cabal’s bedside and his amusement abated. ‘I’d better crack on. I still have a lot to tell you, and dawn won’t wait.’

  Chapter 4

  IN WHICH THE DEAD WALK AND THE LIVING FALL

  Horst awoke with a feeling familiar from his mortal life, a feeling that he had done something the previous night that he would regret in the morning. That he awoke in the early evening of the following day did nothing to diminish that sense. He lay for several minutes within the darkness of his coffin, putting off the moment when he would have to lift the lid, climb down onto the step stool he had found tucked away in an alcove, and face up to the consequences of his weakness with Lady Misericorde. He wasn’t sure whose morals he might have outraged in doing what he did, but he was confident that he had managed it nevertheless.

  He pushed back the lid and rose to a vertical position as if his feet were attached to some ghastly hinge. It was a trick he’d learned some time before and, while he had no idea why vampires should be able to do such a thing, he was glad they did. Getting vertical without it would have involved a lot of half rolling and hanging a leg over the side, and the silly silk bow would likely have fallen off the bier, and it would all be terribly undignified.

  As it was, it transpired he had an audience of the slow-clapping variety.

  ‘Devlin,’ he said, jumping lightly down. ‘How boring to see you. You know, watching somebody sleeping could be construed as a bit creepy.’

  Devlin leaned against the wall and crossed his arms, years of practise at playing the bad boy evident in his every move. ‘We got off on the wrong foot, you and I. We’re on the same side, after all.’

  Horst wasn’t sure they were. Lady Misericorde’s succulent neck and divine blood aside, there was little he found to commend about his recent experiences. There was a belief inherent throughout the Ministerium’s thinking that all the creatures like him would eagerly embrace the concept of a land of the differently alive, but he, for one, just wanted to be left alone. The part of the plan assigned to him, for example, began perforce with the need to raise an elite cadre of vampires, ‘raise’ here used in a more ghoulish sense than most recruiters would be familiar with. He had never, ever infected anyone else with his condition and, given how unpleasant he found it, he was loathe to do so. The very idea of spreading vampirism, when he would happily have cast it off in a second if the means were provided, disgusted him. Yet, here he was, taken on as a human plague rat.

  Feeding was pleasant enough—and here he was briefly distracted by memories of Misericorde’s skin, the taste and scent of her, the effortless breaking of her skin and the smooth slide of his fangs into her flesh, the first spray of hot life onto his tongue before he fastened tight to her alabaster throat and …

  Horst blinked, trying to recover the thread of his thoughts. Oh, yes.

  Feeding was pleasant enough, as was
the speed, the strength, and the ability to cloud minds. But they were balanced against being a monster, and that had never once been a feature in any of his planned careers. He missed the sun. He missed daylight and blue skies. He missed not being a target for vampire slayers.

  He missed not having to talk to snotty werewolves.

  ‘Yes, perhaps we did,’ Horst lied, confident that the wrong foot was exactly the right place to be with the likes of ‘Lord’ Devlin. ‘You seem very at home,’ he added, letting especially when uninvited in other people’s rooms float around unsaid. ‘How long have you been here, in the castle?’

  ‘I was the second to arrive. That was about a month ago. Lady Muck was here first. Got her legs well under the table, that one. Had laboratories set up and everything. They even provided her with staff, scientists and whatnot.’

  Horst could not hide his surprise. ‘How much money have these people got?’

  Devlin shrugged, pleased at the impact the news had. ‘Who knows? I think they more or less own this country, run-down little shithole that it is.’

  ‘You’ve been out of the castle?’

  ‘Ways and means, old man. Ways and means.’ His smile turned to a grimace. ‘It really is a dump, though. You’re not missing much.’

  ‘Even so, I’d like to sample the nightlife. So…’

  Devlin looked at him, slightly amused, but thoughtful. ‘Soon enough. Soon enough.’ Without another word, he turned abruptly and walked out.

  Horst was disinclined to pursue him. Instead he waited until he was sure Devlin had sufficient time to be thoroughly gone before venturing out into the main room. Alisha was there as was a bullet-headed man who snapped to attention and maintained a steely eyes-forward even when Horst deliberately crossed his line of sight and peered into his face as one might look down the barrel of a decommissioned cannon on a seafront promenade.

  ‘You would be Herman, yes?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, sah!’ snapped the man. Then there was a near-audible crunch inside his head as one set of protocols attempted to override another. ‘I mean, yes, m’Lud Horst. Sah!’

  Horst regarded him with repressed amusement. ‘You wouldn’t happen to be ex-military, would you?’

  For the first time, the little dark-brown eyes lurking beneath a ridged brow of similar aspect to a coastal artillery emplacement (to continue the heavy gun theme) swivelled away from the forward position. ‘Yes, m’lud.’ He spoke slowly and with obvious suspicion.

  ‘It’s in your bearing,’ explained Horst, settling on the most flattering lie with the acuity of the practised wastrel. ‘Shoulders, chest, you can tell a trained military man a mile away.’ This seemed to placate Herman, for his eyes slid back to stare ahead.

  Horst turned to smile at Alisha, but as he did, he noted that the ottoman sofa on which Lady Misericorde and he had, in their own ways, enjoyed a meal, was now neatly arranged once more. When he finally faced Alisha, her expression was prim to the point of hostility.

  ‘Alisha,’ he acknowledged her.

  ‘My Lord Horst,’ she replied, her politeness so perfectly insulting that she might have been to an English finishing school. He wasn’t sure how she managed it, but the last time he’d felt so ashamed of himself was the time he discovered that his mother had discovered his discovery of onanism.

  ‘You may return to your duties,’ he said, and waved his hand in dismissal, hoping to cover his embarrassment. That both Alisha and Herman stayed exactly where they were did not help matters. ‘You must have something to be getting on with,’ he said, a little desperately.

  ‘We are your staff, m’lud,’ said Herman, impassive as a bollard yet slightly less attractive. ‘Our duties are here.’

  ‘Well, you don’t both have to be here, do you? I can always call if I need both of you for something.’

  Herman’s thick brow thickened a little further. ‘Like what, m’lud?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. I’m just talking eventualities.’ He looked from one to the other with an emotion that sidled between exasperation and desperation. ‘I’m sure you don’t both need to be here every minute of the day. Night,’ he added, old habits proving remarkably tenacious.

  Alisha looked around. ‘I suppose I could tidy up, my lord. Again.’

  ‘I,’ said Herman, fervour growing in his eye, ‘shall polish your shoes, m’lud.’

  Horst started to protest that he hadn’t really had much of a chance to dirty them yet, but Herman was already collecting Horst’s pristine shoes from his dressing room to go off and make them more pristine still, if such a thing were possible. Moments later and a peremptory door slam later, Horst was alone with Alisha.

  ‘Look,’ he began awkwardly. ‘I detect some distinct hostility that wasn’t there the last time we spoke. By a process of deduction, I’m assuming it’s something to do with last night…’

  ‘None of my business, my lord,’ she said. She went to a low door in the bathroom and recovered cleaning supplies from it.

  Horst watched her as she made herself busy with a can of metal polish, a soft cloth, and the fittings. He felt unhappy and uncertain why he felt so. She was right, after all—it was absolutely none of her business. Yet she was the closest thing to a normal person he had met since his unexpected return to the world of the near-as-damn-it living and he missed the moment of friendly intimacy he’d had with her the previous night, when she had been a nice lady called Alisha, and he had been a nice enough gentleman called Horst. Now he was the Lord of the Dead again and she was somehow aloof of him for all the apparent imbalance of power between them.

  He sank into an armchair and watched her work for five silent minutes. Then he said, ‘I don’t want to be the Lord of the Dead, you know.’

  She paused in polishing a candelabra, then continued without any further response.

  He tried again. ‘I’m just Horst Cabal. I never asked to be … this. I never asked to be risen from dust by the Ministerium. I never asked to be here. Where is here, anyway? Nobody tells me anything.’ He rose to his feet. ‘Apart from you. You’re the only one who’s spoken to me at all like a person speaks to another person. I’d appreciate it if you could talk to me like that again.’ The polishing never faltered. ‘I’d really appreciate it. Please.’

  Alisha finished with the candelabra and started with its twin. Defeated, Horst sank back into the chair.

  ‘I didn’t realise it was such an obsession with people in this castle. Look, if you’re envious about Lady Misericorde, you don’t have to be. We could … you know…’

  Alisha turned to face him across the room. ‘We could what, exactly, my lord?’

  ‘I could…’ Horst had a feeling that he was no longer on thin ice but had already fallen through it. Now his every action was tantamount to flailing uselessly and making things worse, but you can’t ask a drowning man to stop his flailing and just quietly slip into the freezing depths. ‘You and I.’ He lifted his upper lip and tapped a fang. ‘You know.’

  The hand holding the soft cloth was white-knuckled. ‘Don’t you dare touch me,’ she said. ‘You think that’s why I’m angry? Because you haven’t deigned to use me like cattle?’

  ‘To be honest, I’m not sure,’ he began. ‘It’s hard to understand what—’

  ‘I’m not angry with you because you didn’t fasten onto me like a great leech, you idiot.’ She was becoming quite wonderfully angry, and Horst found himself liking her more and more. If he’d really been the monster the Ministerium had been hoping for, she’d probably be dead around now, but he wasn’t, and so she wasn’t. Instead, he sat and took it as this marvellous person tore into him as if he were some office Lothario trying his luck with the secretarial pool.

  ‘I’m angry because you’re letting that woman get her claws into you. You’re right—you shouldn’t be here. You’re a monster and all, but you’re better than them.’ She dismissed her employers with a disdainful toss of the head.

  ‘You.’ He raised an accusing finger to point over
her head. His mother had always taught him that you only pointed at men if they were in a lineup or you were looking for a fight, and you never pointed directly at women at all. He might have been the Lord of the Dead, but that didn’t mean he had to be rude. ‘You are going to get into trouble, talking like that in this place.’

  ‘But you’re not going to report me, are you, Horst?’ She said it with certainty and he was so pleased with the sudden return of first-name terms, he didn’t think to argue.

  ‘I’m not, no. But walls have ears. You should be careful. I’m not sure the Ministerium dismisses staff like most employers. If they let you go, it’ll be off the battlements.’

  ‘I know.’

  He leaned back, hand behind his head, and looked at her seriously. It felt strange, this slipping into a conspiracy within a conspiracy, but he had to say he preferred the company in this one. ‘You’re taking a lot on trust. I could be as bad as them.’

  She shook her head. ‘You’ve only drunk from people who have willingly given you that privilege.’

  ‘Not quite true,’ he corrected her. ‘I didn’t give wotsisname much choice. Encausse. Him.’

  Alisha wrinkled her nose. ‘Encausse is an arse,’ she said, and they both giggled childishly.

  ‘Don’t call him an arse,’ Horst chided her. ‘I don’t like the thought of drinking from one.’ To which Alisha pulled a face and then they giggled again, mainly at her reaction.

  Alisha sobered first. ‘That won’t happen again, though. You know that? They won’t give up any more of their precious blood for you. In their new order, there’ll be other people to provide it.’