The Brothers Cabal

by Jonathan L. Howard

  ‘Horst, you are a good man. You have always been so, and your soul is an untrammelled thing indeed.’

  Horst winced and interrupted. ‘Ah. Well. Maybe not. There was that business with a lacrosse team…’

  Now it was Cabal’s turn to wince. ‘Did anyone suffer?’

  ‘Oh, no. Nothing like that.’

  ‘Was everyone happy?’

  ‘I flatter myself a little to think, yes. Everyone was very nice afterwards, anyway.’

  ‘Then shut up. In a world as grimy and sin-ridden as ours, you’re a paragon precisely because your intentions are always good.’

  ‘Johannes, I killed a man.’

  ‘Pffft.’ Cabal expressed his opinion of that crime with pursed lips and sharp exhalation. ‘A man who had just killed once before your very eyes and was about to murder at least three more unless you intervened. I mean, Horst … a werebadger.’ He said it with leaden disdain. ‘That was a mercy killing. You are a good man. I’ve seen evil. By many metrics, I am evil. I know what it looks like. You are not even similar. Remember that, brother. Let that be your bulwark against the impulses your condition imposes upon you.’

  Horst sat, absorbing whatever wisdom he could draw from the words, or at least, most of the words. ‘Bulwark?’ he asked.

  ‘Bulwark. Do you know what that is?’

  ‘I can look it up later. But thanks. Thank you, Johannes.’

  Johannes Cabal fluttered his hand, reinforcing the humanity of a vampire being child’s play, apparently. ‘Now, kindly continue. You were just in a circumstance by which your doom was assured.’

  ‘It was pretty desperate,’ said Horst, slightly miffed at his brother’s lack of concern.

  ‘But here you are, telling me the tale. Really, Horst, you undermine all the tension of the narrative by being the storyteller. I know you survive.’

  ‘I can’t help that,’ said Horst, and continued.

  Chapter 12

  IN WHICH SACRIFICES ARE MADE

  Horst imagined himself as a stilt walker, striding along on lengths of insensate wood, except in his case they were lengths of insensate flesh and blood that in happier times he would refer to as his legs. These were not happy times, however, and his legs—in addition to insensate—were not rigid. His first attempt to stilt walk upon his own legs ended in failure, as did the second and third. He only kept doing it because it was no slower than crawling and also because it raised him high so that perhaps Becky on the footplate might see him and stop the train.

  And then the train did stop reversing out of the spur, but only for a moment while the gears were thrown into forward drive, and the train moved ponderously away from him. Behind, he could hear thuds, highly pitched screams emitted by no creatures that had ever walked the Earth before, and other noises that defied description exactly because their like had never been heard on Earth before. Also, they seemed to be growing closer.

  Horst was forced to the conclusion that the jig was very likely up with him. Besides, even if the creatures didn’t finish him, the cloud was still steadily thinning. He had only vague memories of how the sun had felt last time it sent him to leaves and ashes, but those memories were not joyful. He hated to die again, with things unfinished like this.

  Beneath him, the ground purred with impacts and he rolled onto his back to see what was coming. His old friend, the giant carnivorous woodlouse or another very like it, was heading directly for him. He doubted he could depend on the statue creature intervening again, so resorted to feebly waving his hands at it and saying ‘Shoo’ in a aged whisper.

  This only seemed to incense the creature. It reared high, spreading the edges of the ridges behind its head in the way a hooded cobra might, if it had lots of legs and was very ugly indeed. Horst wished he had a spear, or a sword, or a pointed stick, anything that might upset it as it stood before him, convinced of its victory and with its underbelly exposed. Admittedly, he wouldn’t go so far as to call it a soft underbelly, coated as it was with chitinous plating. It was still an underbelly, however, and he wished he had something with which to aggressively poke it there. Even if he couldn’t kill it, he could perhaps bruise it a little, causing it some discomfort later. He appreciated that his situation was so hopeless that causing the thing that killed him mild discomfort sometime after it had eaten him would be the closest thing to a Pyrrhic victory he could arrange. This was the limit of his dismay beyond the wish he could have seen things through and perhaps died a little less pathetically. He could barely think anymore. He stopped waving his hands at the monster and just wafted one dismissively at it as he lapsed back.

  He stared up at the arcane cloud that had brought his doom and all its little pal dooms. ‘Ah. Whatever,’ he said, fully knowledgeable that they were poor last words. Last words weren’t on his short list of final regrets, however, so he let them slide.

  The woodlouse thing seemed upset by such inattention, however, and made a dreadful noise. It was a complicatedly dreadful noise, and Horst was unable to make out the nuances due to the mechanical chattering coming from the other direction. The chattering seemed vaguely familiar and probably something to do with the stream of bullets creasing the air above him. Ah, yes. Thompson sub-machine gun, .45 ACP. Now he remembered.

  The creature was making so much fuss because, it transpired, its underbelly actually was quite soft when gunfire was hosed across it. It crashed back down to bring its heavier outer armour into play and then, either from surprise or prudence, rolled up once more into its great tyre-like form.

  ‘On your feet, Cabal!’ he heard somebody … Major Haskins, yes … shouting.

  ‘I can’t manage that,’ he replied, slightly peevishly as if he’d been asked to do handsprings. ‘I’m weak. Run out of … oomph.’ This latter thing he said, because his sense of propriety cavilled at talking about blood in polite company.

  ‘Oomph?’ The major was closer now. ‘Take the gun, take the gun!’ he said to somebody else. Then Horst felt his collar gripped and he was suddenly being dragged up the small slope to the edge of the showground.

  ‘This is very kind of you,’ said Horst as he was unceremoniously rolled under the fence before being dragged again.

  ‘Never leave a man behind,’ said the major. ‘Not if you can help it.’

  ‘How does this thing work?’ That was Professor Stone.

  ‘It doesn’t,’ managed the major between heavy breaths. Horst sans oomph was turning out to be an awkward load. ‘Out of ammo. Damn it, help me, man!’

  Professor Stone contributed his spare hand and Horst found himself sliding backwards across the green swathe a little more rapidly. He was glad he’d already decided his current clothing was going for rags the first chance he had to change, as he shuddered to think how deeply the grass stains would run. It was the latest in a day of horrors.

  ‘When you say oomph,’ huffed the major through his exertions, ‘do you mean to say…’

  ‘Blood,’ said the professor, also starting to breathe heavily. ‘He means blood.’

  Horst only raised a hand and waved a finger in the professor’s direction. Yes. That.

  ‘Right,’ said the major, and dropped Horst. While the professor was still at the ‘What the blazes?’ stage, the major cut over him with ‘We’ll never make it to the rendezvous going like this. We’re not even outrunning the zombies, never mind those other … things. Professor, take the gun and run ahead. We’ll catch you up.’

  ‘What hope have…’ began the professor, then paused as he understood the plan. ‘Major, that’s not wise. He is starving. He may not be able to control his need for sustenance.’

  Part of Horst’s mind also understood now. Unfortunately, it was the part that rubbed its hands at the realisation, and said, Good-oh.

  Hush, you, said Horst inwardly. I told you to clear off. It was very dramatic. Don’t go undermining me by coming back and spoiling everything.

  ‘We’ll have to take that risk.’

  ‘No,’ whispered Hor
st, ‘leave me. Don’t risk yourselves.’ But neither of them heard him.

  There was little time for prevarication; a crash made the professor and major look to the town in time to see a creature of the proportions of a harvestman spider* expanded to a scale wherein its legs were as thick as any girder to be found in a Scottish shipyard crash through the wall of the town’s general store. Screaming locals were noticeable by their absence, and both men saw with relief that the impromptu evacuation had been as near total as they could have hoped for.

  ‘Very well,’ said the professor. ‘Good luck. Both of you.’

  As the professor ran from them, Major Haskins lifted Horst into a sitting position like a man with an impracticably large ventriloquist doll. ‘Right, you can have a pint, and that’s your lot,’ he said.

  ‘I … may not be able to control it,’ whispered Horst.

  The major looked him in the eye. ‘Well, you better bloody had, Cabal. That’s the long and short of it. Besides, I think you’re a better man than to let whatever little voice bids you do evil call the shots for you.’

  Wha…? said Horst’s evil little voice within him. How did he know?

  Shut up, Horst said to it with his big inner voice. I’ve told you. Clear off.

  I’ll be back, said the little voice, and it seemed to mean it. In any case, it grew quiet.

  ‘I’ll control it,’ Horst said out loud. ‘I’m my own man. One pint, no more.’

  ‘Righty-oh,’ said the major without obvious enthusiasm. ‘Let’s get this over with before we attract any attention.’ He jerked down the side of his collar to expose his jugular, his expression that of long-suffering impatience.

  Horst felt his fangs extend, but felt he couldn’t just bite without some preamble. ‘This is terribly kind of you, Major—’ he began.

  ‘Do crack along,’ the major interrupted him. ‘I’m not inviting you to afternoon tea.’

  ‘No,’ admitted Horst. ‘Quite.’ And drove in his fangs.

  ‘Ow!’ said the major tersely, but otherwise maintained a dignified silence while Horst fed.

  One pint only, Horst said to himself, although he wasn’t quite sure how much that felt like. It had been a very long time since he had drunk a pint of beer, for example, or a pint of milk, and the experience of vampiric drinking was profoundly different anyway. Most people don’t go around attaching themselves to kegs and udders by their canines, after all. Not most people.

  Instead, Horst relied on the quantities he had learned to take that did not unduly inconvenience the donor during his year with the carnival. That situation had been different, though. He had been at liberty to feed frequently and lightly on patrons who would be expecting to come away from a carnival with a love bite or two in any case or they would regard it as a wasted evening. He had never starved before, but for the time he had endured several years in a crypt. Most of that time had been spent in a fog of inactivity when—day or night—he did not move for weeks on end, and had never had reason to exert himself. This whole fighting zombies, werewolves, and otherworldly creatures business was the most wearing thing he had ever done in his life and unlife, and so he had never before burnt his resources down to nothing.

  ‘Is that … that must be a pint?’ he heard someone say nearby, but he decided to ignore them, whoever they were. Or, at least, part of him decided to ignore it, and the rest went along with it for a moment because the sensation of returning strength was so pleasurable, and anything was better than being a weak, doddering mess. But with strength, there also returned clarity, and this detected in the part of him that said that nobody had spoken a certain smugness that he had taken it at its word. That was enough to break the spell.

  Horst lifted his head and wiped the blood from his lips. ‘Yes, Major Haskins,’ he said, ‘I’m sure it must be. Thank you.’

  Horst stood easily, his weakness fading from his memory almost as quickly as his body. The major followed him while tentatively touching his wounded neck. ‘Should I get some iodine on these?’

  ‘You can if you like, but from what I understand, a vampire’s bite is very clean. My brother theorised that it was because all the bacteria you normally get in a human mouth can’t survive, so a vampire’s mouth is sterile. Other plus points are fresh breath and no plaque.’ He pointed towards the line where he hoped the train had stopped, just out of view beyond a small wood. ‘We should get along, Major. They won’t wait forever.’

  He turned back just in time to see the major hit by the giant woodlouse thing. It smashed into him like a charging bull, jaws scissoring as it caught his arm and took it off in the middle of the biceps. Major Haskins cried out in startlement more than pain as he was borne down onto his back by the vast bulk of the creature. His cry was echoed distantly by Professor Stone, who was just climbing over the far fence when the disaster struck.

  Horst did not hesitate, but flung himself at the louse, grabbing it under the near edge of the carapace and attempting to flip it. The louse really didn’t care to be lifted, and a host of hook-ended feet thrust into the earth meant that usually it got its wish. The hook system, while efficient and effective, however, had never evolved to deal with the efforts of an impassioned vampire. With a grassy tear of ripping sod, the louse found itself on its back. It made a baying, chittering shriek at such indignity, which, while painful to the ear, didn’t help it back onto its feet in the slightest. Instead it writhed on its back in the way known so well to its smaller, non-terrifying cousins.

  Horst went to help Haskins, but hesitated when he saw the extent of his wounds. Not only had one arm been taken, but the creature’s slicing mouthparts had done their work on his chest, too. The ribs were laid open, the broken ends of bone visible, and something pulsed in the cavity beyond that Horst feared was the major’s exposed heart.

  ‘Cabal…’ The major wheezed the words though the agony of his wrecked ribcage must have made even breathing desperately painful. ‘Cabal … take what … you need…’

  ‘I’ll get the professor,’ said Horst hopelessly. He looked over at Professor Stone. He had the sub-machine gun under the crook of his right arm, and his left hand to his mouth in shock. It hardly surprised Horst. Even from over there, the extent of the major’s injuries must have been appallingly apparent. ‘I’ll get help.’

  Major Haskins managed a very exasperated sigh despite everything. ‘Don’t be a damn … damn fool, lad. I’m … done for … My blood…’ He held up his hands and they were dripping red. ‘Don’t need it now. Be … be my guest.’ He lolled back, his eyes dimming as he lapsed into shock.

  Horst had a feeling, a sense of some bit of Miss Manners etiquette that he’d heard somewhere that it was rather discourteous to feed on people like that. On the other hand, he had been invited, and it would be rude to refuse. So he held Haskins close and reopened the so recently sealed wounds, all the while keeping an eye on the giant louse.

  He was therefore looking in the right direction when a stream of grey-white fluid sprayed onto it from somewhere on high. The fluid behaved oddly, however; it had seemed liquid enough on impact, but now it flowed quickly and not entirely in the direction usually suggested by gravity. Instead it ran between body segments, and around legs, losing its wet gleam within moments to turn a dull matte. The louse certainly didn’t like it. It squealed and flexed, scraping its legs in an effort to cast the stuff off, but only succeeding in gluing its legs together. Then, like a marionette whisked from the stage, it was gone, pulled into the air on the now very solid stream, up, up, into the waiting jaws of the great harvestman. It seemed the harvestman had more tricks up its many sleeves than merely being very big.

  Horst stopped drinking and looked up awestruck as it looked down upon him, probably less awestruck. It watched him with the high disinterest of a hanging judge as it slowly crunched on the louse, bits of twitching chitin raining from its jaws, themselves devices of great complexity that dismantled as they manipulated as they chewed.

  The louse lasted no ti
me at all, and the harvestman’s hunger was not assuaged. Before Horst could react, another jet of the grey web was arcing down from some gland mounted over the giant’s jaws. Horst threw himself back, but he was not the target. The major was gone in a thrice, although a splash of the liquid settled upon Horst’s ankles and might have drawn him up, too, but for the thinness of the strand connecting it to the main mass. Even so, his feet were off the floor before it snapped, dumping him on his back as the major, mercifully beyond sensation, met a swift end in the slashing mandibles of the harvestman.

  Horst stared, horrified. The small voice that he usually ignored, however, was pointing out with increasing vigour that there is a lot less meat in a human than a giant woodlouse, and the harvestman had disposed of the latter in less than fifteen seconds. It would therefore take proportionately less time to deal with the major, at which point it would look for the next snack it could snag and masticate. As Horst was lying sprawled right in front of it this would not be a long search. Perhaps Horst might want to consider making life a little more problematical for the giant harvestman rather than just lying there like finger food?

  Horst blurred into motion, and unblurred ten feet away in a spectacular forward roll that took him another fifteen. The resultant grass stains were shocking. The problem was his ankles were no longer quite as independent of one another as he—and they—were used to. The webbing, more like a great mass of pale grey rubber, had dried rapidly and was hobbling him as effectively as any pair of manacles. He tried tearing the stuff away, but it was flexible enough to require time he did not have to remove it and, worse still, the surface ruptured to reveal a still-wet web that his hand almost stuck to. Having two limbs glued was proving nuisance enough; if he ended up with a hand and both feet all joined together, it didn’t entirely preclude the possibility of escape, but it certainly damned any hope of doing it with panache.

  Instead, therefore, he tried hopping. This he could do neither efficiently nor stylishly. Instead, it only reminded him of the sack races he had competed in (and usually won) at primary school. It also had the effect of exciting the attention of the harvestman, which had started to make the odd head-bobbling movements that one associates with every predator from raptors through cats and so to mantises. These are movements that never presage well for the object of their attention, and Horst decided that a sack race without a sack was not the tactic that would save him. He tried bounding, instead, hands together, running as a dog might. A very slow dog.