The Relic Guild

by Edward Cox

To Clara’s surprise, instead of cowering before the Relic Guild agent, the asylum chief drew herself up and got angrier. She stepped in close to the old bounty hunter, proudly, defiantly. Sergeant Ennis didn’t know which way to turn.

  ‘I’m old enough to remember the Relic Guild, and the people who disappeared because of you,’ she said, voice low. ‘But just because you hide your face, don’t think that you can frighten me.’

  Clara noticed Samuel’s hand flex near his pistol.

  ‘Now,’ Symes added, ‘what is the Resident going to do about my people?’

  Acting on some instinct she didn’t know she possessed, Clara stepped in before Samuel’s brain followed through with what his gun-hand seemed to be thinking.

  ‘Doctor Symes, listen to me,’ she said, and the strength in her voice surprised her. ‘You’re angry and frightened, and we understand that. But if any person here was bitten by the demon, they’ll be infected with a virus that has no cure. As a doctor, you must understand the severity of that.’

  ‘Well, yes.’ Symes’s body language became somewhat less aggressive. ‘But I have friends down in the sublevels, patients—’

  ‘And we will do all we can to help them,’ Clara promised with more confidence than she felt. ‘But if this virus gets out onto the streets, we’ll have an epidemic on our hands. We need to deal with this right here, right now, and we need your help.’

  Symes gave Samuel a final glare, and then nodded. ‘Of course,’ she said.

  ‘Thank you.’ Clara turned to Ennis. ‘Sergeant, please help Doctor Symes search for anyone who has been bitten. Isolate those you find. Keep them away from other people.’

  ‘And you lock all the doors,’ Samuel added menacingly. ‘No one enters or leaves the asylum until we say so. Is that clear?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Ennis said, before he and Symes strode away to carry out their orders.

  ‘I know you said to let you do the talking,’ Clara whispered to Samuel, ‘but I didn’t think shooting a doctor was the best way forward.’

  ‘Come on,’ Samuel grumbled, and he started off across the foyer floor.

  The brief but angry confrontation had drawn more attention to the Relic Guild agents, as they crossed the room. Clara kept her stride as confident as she could beside Samuel, reminding herself that her face was hidden as she did her best to ignore the stares and whispers.

  Samuel steered her towards a door to the side of the elevator. To Clara’s surprise the door opened by itself as they approached it, and then closed again after them with the sound of bolts sliding into place.

  On the other side was the landing of a stairwell that led down into the sublevels of the asylum. The smell of rotting vegetables was much more pronounced here, but there was also another scent which was much more familiar.

  Clara gave a sardonic smile. ‘You can show yourself now, Van Bam.’

  The Resident materialised, leaning back against the stairwell door. His had his green glass cane in one hand and a cloth satchel hung from his shoulder. Just his presence eased some of Clara’s nerves.

  ‘You did well with Doctor Symes, Clara,’ he said.

  ‘You were watching?’

  ‘Always. And your diplomatic skills are, perhaps, a lesson to us all.’ He turned his metallic eyes to Samuel.

  With customary irascibility, Samuel ignored the comment and said, ‘What have you found?’

  ‘Not much more than you,’ Van Bam replied. ‘No one really seems to know what has occurred down in the sublevels. I am convinced, however, that Fabian Moor has been here, though it is likely he has already vanished again.’

  Samuel sighed. ‘Then we’re clearing up after him, just like the old days.’

  ‘So it would seem. However, I would be surprised if Moor came to the asylum simply to feed again. Like the antiques shop, it is conspicuous. Let us hope that somewhere below he has left a clue as to what his true purpose is.’

  Samuel drew the rifle from the holster on his back, and checked its clip and power stone. ‘Stay behind me,’ he said, and then began descending the first flight of stairs.

  Van Bam gave Clara a quick smile, and motioned after Samuel. ‘Shall we?’

  Chapter Twelve

  Lunacy

  ‘Moor’s presence has somehow disrupted the eye devices within the asylum,’ Van Bam said as they descended the stairs. ‘The Nightshade could show me nothing of the sublevels.’

  Before him, he could see the colours in Clara’s body were in turmoil as she followed immediately behind Samuel, her eyes concentrating on the steps.

  ‘We should expect the worst,’ he added.

  After only four short flights, the stairs ended at the door to the first sublevel of East Side Asylum. Through a small, reinforced window, Van Bam caught a brief glimpse of a dimly lit corridor beyond, before Samuel pushed his face up against the glass and blocked his view.

  ‘There are three sublevels to this asylum,’ Van Bam said, ‘and this first is mainly reserved for the treatment of those patients it is safer to keep segregated from the other inmates, as well as society.’

  ‘Great,’ Samuel grumbled without turning from the window, ‘as if things weren’t going to be dangerous enough.’

  Beside Van Bam, Clara pulled her hood down.

  ‘Keep your face concealed,’ he told her. ‘Encountering survivors is not impossible.’

  Her troubled frown disappeared into impenetrable shadow as she pulled the hood back up.

  Van Bam himself wore no hat or hood made from the charmed Aelfirian material, so he had cast an illusion upon his face that blurred his features.

  ‘Are you sensing anything, Samuel?’ he said.

  Samuel turned from the window and rubbed his forehead as though he had a headache.

  ‘Nothing much,’ he said after a moment. ‘But … something is there.’

  Van Bam nodded. ‘Then we proceed with caution.’

  He stepped past Samuel and laid a hand upon the door. The sound of bolts sliding free quickly followed as the magical energy that operated the asylum’s inner mechanisms recognised the Resident’s touch.

  Van Bam stepped back and allowed Samuel to pull the door open. The stench of rotting vegetables became so strong that Clara raised a hand to her face, obviously fighting the urge to gag.

  ‘Keep your distance,’ Samuel said as he thumbed the rifle’s power stone; it whined and began to glow as he stepped through the door. ‘Don’t get in front of me.’

  With his rifle in hand, he walked to the left and disappeared from view.

  Van Bam held Clara back a moment before they followed.

  To the right, the dull metal doors of the elevator formed a dead end. Samuel was already several paces ahead, slowly making his way along a darkened corridor. He trod carefully, holding his rifle to his chest, the barrel pointing up to the ceiling. There were no other doors along the corridor, and the light prisms above glowed weakly. Van Bam and Clara followed Samuel at a distance.

  ‘The asylum is in lockdown,’ Van Bam mused. ‘It has switched to emergency power.’

  But Clara didn’t appear to be listening, and Van Bam could see curiosity in the hues of her body. She was watching Samuel as he took careful steps along the corridor. The old bounty hunter’s shadowed face was down-turned, as if he was relying on some inner instinct to steer his way.

  Clara leaned into Van Bam. ‘What’s he doing?’ she whispered.

  ‘Waiting for a warning signal.’ Van Bam replied, just as quietly. He didn’t need to see the young changeling’s face to know that it was questioning.

  She said, ‘When you asked him if he could sense anything, what did you mean?’

  ‘Samuel was touched by magic in a peculiar way, Clara. It gave him a prescient awareness. He can sense the approach of danger moments before it arrives.’

  Clara was
quiet for a moment. ‘That’s a handy trick for a bounty hunter,’ she said.

  ‘And it has proved beneficial to the Relic Guild on more than a few occasions. However, not only does Samuel’s gift alert him to danger, but it also feeds his baser instincts and, to some degree, controls his reactions. It gives him a preternatural survival mechanism that is as malevolent as it is prescient. When Samuel feels his magic stirring, Clara, it is better not to be too close to his guns.’

  Up ahead, the corridor doglegged to the right, and Samuel slipped out of view.

  When Van Bam reached the turn he saw another corridor stretching ahead, and this one was lined on both sides with doors to offices and therapy rooms. He and Clara inched forwards slowly as Samuel moved from door to door, finding each locked but pausing to peer through the windows. Evidently his prescient awareness did not detect any immediate danger, and he continued on. He didn’t get far, however, before he stopped and signalled to his fellow agents to remain where they were.

  As Van Bam drew Clara to a halt, he could tell by her body language that her own heightened senses had detected something.

  ‘Van Bam, I—’

  ‘Quiet,’ Van Bam hissed, and his metal eyes remained on Samuel and the violet glow of the rifle’s power stone.

  He had made it halfway down the corridor, and now stood staring at something to the right. After a long moment he looked back up the corridor. ‘You might want to see this,’ Samuel said, his voice low and dispassionate.

  Van Bam heard a shuffling sound as he led Clara to Samuel’s position. The corridor broke to allow for some kind of common room. Tables and chairs had been overturned. A game of Hangman begun in chalk on a blackboard at the far end, had not been concluded. Van Bam reasoned that this room was where patients relearned how to interact on a social level. There were books and games strewn across the floor. Amongst the mess, a figure in the yellow uniform of an inmate lay shaking.

  Apparently uninterested in the inmate, Samuel went off to check the few locked offices around the common room. Van Bam, however, stepped up to the convulsing figure. Clara joined him.

  It was a victim of Fabian Moor’s bite, entering the final stages of the viral infection. All skin had become grey stone, shining, soft and clammy. Features were disfigured, body twisted and limbs stretched thin.

  Its movement stopped abruptly, and it lay still as a dead thing.

  ‘The virus has run its course,’ Van Bam said, and then moved Clara back as the golem stirred and clambered to its feet with stiff and awkward movements.

  It made no move towards the Relic Guild agents, or to do anything at all. Seemingly devoid of comprehension, the golem simply stood and faced Van Bam with eyeless sockets as if waiting for him to issue an order.

  ‘It … it won’t hurt us?’ Clara asked.

  Van Bam shook his head. ‘Not without orders.’

  Samuel returned and stood before the golem. When it didn’t react to his presence, he holstered his rifle and turned his back on it.

  ‘Maybe we’ll be lucky,’ he said. ‘Maybe the virus has already run its course everywhere, and we’ll be facing nothing but golems.’

  ‘That would be lucky indeed,’ Van Bam said. But he and Samuel both knew that the incubation period of the virus was not the same for every victim.

  ‘Either way,’ said Samuel, ‘we can’t leave this thing behind us.’

  So saying, he opened his coat and drew a mean-looking knife from a sheath strapped against his ribs. Turning, and without pause, he rammed the blade into the soft stone of the newly formed golem’s face, and then stepped back.

  There was a loud pop and Van Bam saw Clara flinch. The golem made a feeble attempt to remove the knife from its face, but then began convulsing, jerking and twisting, and a hissing sound filled the air. The smell of rotting vegetables vanished, replaced by a sour and acrid stench of dispelling magic which tingled upon Van Bam’s skin. The golem’s limbs bent to hideous angles, but not one sound of complaint came from its mouth. Within moments the damp stone of its head dried with a multitude of dull cracks. It shattered to grey rubble within its yellow uniform and fell to the floor in a heap.

  In the following silence, Samuel remained staring down at the ruins of the golem. He kept his back to his comrades, and something about his shades unsettled Van Bam. More and more colour was blooming in the grey.

  ‘Samuel?’

  The old bounty hunter wheeled around, drawing his rifle and thumbing the power stone. He took aim straight at Clara’s face.

  ‘They’re coming …’

  Clara didn’t seem to know which way to turn, but Van Bam grabbed her arm and dragged her to the back of the room until they stood by the blackboard.

  She clutched to his arm tightly. ‘I can hear them,’ she whimpered.

  And so could he: grunts, and shuffling footsteps heading towards them from somewhere unseen.

  An age seemed to pass before the first animated victim of Fabian Moor’s virus came into view. It staggered into the common area with a crippled gait. Pale and inhuman, it came forward. What remained of its hair was matted with blood, as was its face. More red stained its white doctor’s coat. There was a vicious bite wound on its neck, from which a web of black veins spread out over its skin. Its expression was one of hatred, of a desire to destroy.

  But Samuel didn’t kill the monster as it shuffled towards him, exposing long, chattering teeth. With hardened nerve, he waited until three more infected victims appeared. They followed the first, clawing at each other in their eagerness to draw fresh blood from the Relic Guild agents. Two were in the earlier stages of the virus, their movements comparatively fluid. The third, caught in a state between flesh and stone, lagged behind as its fellows clawed ahead. Its legs seemed to become stiffer, faltering with each step it took. With voices caught somewhere between coughs and barks, hands reaching forwards hungrily, all four victims came for Samuel.

  The lead monster tripped and fell to its knees, several paces from its intended prey. As it struggled to rise, the others caught up with it, and they became entangled in a bizarre, almost comical way.

  Samuel’s rifle released a burst of thaumaturgy.

  The bullet slammed into the chest of the monster on its knees. Fire bloomed from within it, but not yellow flames that licked and danced; rather, a fierce storm of dull orange that consumed its victim from the inside out and spread to those within touching distance. Van Bam felt a sudden wave of heat, and smelt the reek of burning flesh mingled with the rotting stench of infection. The four virus victims screamed and writhed as the magic of Samuel’s fire-bullet ate them greedily. Within seconds they had been reduced to piles of hot ash.

  A few flames danced upon the carpet, but quickly died to leave dark, smouldering patches.

  Samuel waved a hand to clear the smoke, and then, quite calmly, he holstered his rifle and drew his revolver. Clara looked at Van Bam, but the Resident raised a hand for continued silence. A chorus of shrieks was coming from the corridor now. Voice upon voice added to the terrible din; footstep after shuffling footstep grew louder and closer.

  As the first of the new horde rounded the corner, Samuel began firing his revolver. This time he was using regular bullets. Cold and calculated, he fired shot after shot. Each time he pulled the trigger, the power stone flashed, the revolver made a low and hollow spitting sound, and, as soon as one of the infected appeared, it fell dead, its head ruined to a bloody pulp.

  When eight victims in varying stages of infection lay motionless on the floor, Samuel opened the revolver’s chamber and seemed unmoved as a new wave of the infected began emerging from the corridor, cough-barking and clambering over the dead bodies in their way.

  ‘I need a moment to reload,’ Samuel said calmly, as he began feeding grey metal slugs from his utility belt into the gun in an almost casual fashion.

  Van Bam stepped in front of Cl
ara, and dropped to one knee. Whispering to his magic, he stabbed his cane down onto the floor. The green glass flared with a sound like a distant chime. Streaks of light flew from it, then turned to wasps the size of rats in midair, which swarmed around the infected horde. Acting on some primal instinct, Fabian Moor’s victims attacked the wasps, clawing and screeching manically as the oversized insects buzzed angrily among them, stinging, too fast to catch.

  The illusion didn’t last long. As the rat-sized wasps faded to wisps of light that quickly disappeared, Samuel snapped shut the chamber of his revolver. He began firing again.

  Seven more infected inmates and asylum staff fell, their heads ruined by the cold accuracy of Samuel’s marksmanship.

  By the time he finished firing, the power stone’s charge was low. Heavy use had dimmed its violet glow and left the rich scent of spent thaumaturgy in the air. Samuel twisted it loose and replaced it with another stone from his utility belt.

  He gestured to the corpses. ‘That’s all of them,’ he said. His voice was detached. ‘For now.’

  Van Bam nodded. Beside him, Clara released a breath. The Resident left her and moved up alongside Samuel. The floor before them was covered in ash and corpses. The stench of death was foul.

  ‘They came as a group, more or less,’ Van Bam said. ‘It is as if we had distracted them.’

  Samuel nodded as he again loaded fresh bullets into his revolver. ‘But distracted them from what?’

  Van Bam paused only for a moment. ‘We must continue.’

  ‘Wait,’ Clara said before either man could move. ‘What about them?’ She gestured to the corpses lying across each other on the floor, and swallowed. ‘Aren’t they still infected? Shouldn’t we burn the bodies or something?’

  ‘I’m not wasting any more fire-bullets,’ Samuel stated. ‘I’ll scout ahead.’

  And with that he trampled over the corpses, showing not the slightest respect or concern. Revolver in hand, he turned to the right and disappeared into the corridor beyond.

  Van Bam’s metallic eyes remained on the dead. ‘The virus is magical in nature, Clara. Death of the carrier is the surest way to extinguish it. These victims are no longer infected.’ He held a hand out to her. ‘Come.’