Master In His Tomb

by Jack Holloway

  “In part. There were other slips though. The ritual greetings were…” I decide to enumerate his failings, so that he might learn. “I simply have no idea what made you believe that a 16th century ritual for greeting a returning sickly nephew after a decade apart would be in any way appropriate for my arrival. And it’s a raising ritual anyway, you don’t just do it when you feel like it. One chance, that’s it. The cups you used for the gifts were… porcelain? I mean really! Electrum, man! And you, the sweat was the least of it. What glyphs and barrier spells you hold around yourself smell of iron and grease. Rather an odd look for a Vampire master. Your guards are human, fine enough as soldiers go, but human guards for a Master...”

  He closes his eyes and lets it all wash over him, I take little joy in scolding the man but a scolding he deserves.

  “I could continue if you wish. As with most of my kind I have excellent hearing that only sharpens with age. Heartbeats are always a give-away, as is breathing, but the final and central thing to note is that even if every single other Master had passed into the great empty, I can assure you that the chances of you, you my good sir, being made up to that exalted rank are precisely zero.”

  His gaze levels and he glares, those eyes again, he must be terrifying to fight, his power sparks behind that cold facade. “I think I’m about to get a blast of the nineteenth century. I shouldn’t be too surprised given how long you’ve been out of circulation, but go on, hit me with it.” He leans back, his chair adapting to his stance through a contraption of springs.

  “Your age, young man. Nothing more, nothing less. Master rank implies at least a thousand years of service, and that’s after you awake from the blood haze. You would have been a man of rank and substance even when I encountered my misfortune. I’d have heard of you daily, at least in passing, You would have had a reputation amongst us. You would have been respected and honoured.”

  “I told you there’s been some turnover, a lot of your traditions are dead…”

  “Not that one. Our young are too... you mention tradition. Our young are what your traditions would expect, particularly without a Master around to guide them. Were you a hundred years older than you clearly are, you would still be running about trying to get your end away with the chambermaids, and leaving their corpses strewn across the sewers for us to clean up. Two hundred years or less. My goodness.”

  Johnson pulls out his fake teeth, modelled after a newborn, and tosses them into a waste bin. Then he points to the door. His guards take my arms. Their grip is weak but a cold deadness spreads from their touch through my muscle, which is surprising.

  Humans have some new tricks. The Sailor King would be proud.

  “Well that’s that then. Duty performed. Now for the good news Albrecht. They’re dead. Every last one of them, no gods, no masters, just idiot monsters running around Europe and wherever they can sneak their way in. So, your revenge list will be even shorter than I said before. Short as short can be. Could go urinate on their graves I suppose. If you do that sort of thing. And if you have the plumbing.”

  He deadpans. “Or if they had graves.”

  I’m bundled through the now abandoned secretarial pool the signs of hurried evacuation obvious from the cups and screens knocked to the floor, along the canvas corridors, legs dragging along behind me. From the breeze I am being moved towards an exit from this temporary complex and I try to keep my bearings despite the ache in my joints from the guards’ grip.

  All the while Johnson’s voice is my constant companion. His voice coming from just behind my right shoulder as he strides purposefully beside me. Purpose. That is what drives the man, and he thinks it’s duty.

  “The world has changed a lot. Knowing your proclivities, I think you’d quite like it if you got to experience it full blast. Our experts think it’s about the best environment for your kind you could get. Not sure you’ll get to find out though. Cooperate and I’ll put in my good word and we’ll have to see what comes from up top. You find that out when I do and then we can talk properly. I hope.”

  Both his words and the motion of the guards go faster and faster. I suspect there was something in the blood or water I was given as the world seems to be subject to a very personal spin. More guards have fallen in behind us, rifles aimed in my direction.

  “Idiots would just shoot each other,” mutters Helene from the floor.

  “Very true dear girl, but humans have always viewed their compatriots as depressingly expendable.”

  Johnson is still speaking. Mostly to himself, to my mind, running through the options. He did not fake the interest in our conversation, merely his part in the pantomime. “Damn locals will want first crack at you. This was their stupid idea. Goddamn it, we’re not what we used to be.”

  We approach the outer doors and stop for a moment. They have an odd look, covered in glyphs cut into lead in those overly familiar bright sharp cuts, and there is a cold radiating from what is outside that slices through the over-heated inside of the base in much the same way, figuratively.

  “So Master Albrecht, first of the family and visitor to this Ice Age in Scarlet. Take a look at the world outside and see if our experts up at the Institute are right. See if it’s to your tastes, you poor bloodsucking monster.”

  I am thrown through the set of unaccountably solid doors at the end of walls made of canvas, and into a world of red shadow and cold.

  Clouds roil above me. Heavy with the dust of continents. Monsters of indescribable nature swoop and howl among them. The sun is absent. The air is sulphurous and ice cold. The frozen ruins of an alien city of steel monsters stretches for the sky with hands of jagged glass through which the wind howls and shrieks in an inchoate anger.

  I can barely hear Johnson. “Like it? I don’t. This is the Catastrophe, Master Albrecht. Drink it in.”

  Frost claws at my skin and what passes for my soul, and it occurs to me, as a bag is slipped over my head by hands unseen, that someone has been very, very stupid.

  A sharp pain behind my eyes as true darkness falls once more and I realise I am, for the first time in millennia, quite angry. Things have not turned out right at all.

  This is very wrong. This is something I recognise in broad strokes. Implementation has been disastrous. Catastrophic.

  Someone needs to pay for this. I had fail safes. I just need to know who it was. Amend and activate. Understand what changes were made to my original calculations.

  Then there’s the damage already done… The casualties in the tens of millions at least?

  Anything is possible with planning. I can make this better.

  I need to set wheels in motion.

  I am face down on the ground, my hands being pulled behind my back.

  In the moments before I am pinned ready to return to whatever incarceration awaits me, I twitch my numb fingers in brittle freezing blade grass leaving behind a sigil of distress and a claim on past deeds, set in the iron of the cog I had hidden between my fingers. I would be unpleasantly surprised if there was no one left who owed me a favour that would merit a rescue, though as to their literacy I will simply hold my breath and hope.

  Figuratively and literally.

  3

  Some Witches (friendly)

  Nan, current first amongst the western witches pulls up short in her daily baking routine and gives the kitchen a hard stare.

  The hot gingerbread cookie she had removed from her favourite baking tray, foil covered and hot to the touch, is left hovering halfway to the tin which would have been its new home, gravity defeated by an absent-minded scintilla of the old lady’s power.

  “Are you feeling alright Nan?”

  Nan takes a deep breath and gathers herself. She carefully snatches the floating biscuit from the air and places the gingerbread treat into the tin, stacking it with the others like a pile of sweet and spicy logs. “A moment, dear heart. Something has woken up and it’s asking for our help.”

  Silence. No, near silence. A whisper of somethin
g dead and buried passing through the earth, a hint of blood, an undercurrent of light.

  “Now that’s all desperately interesting.” Lid slips back on tin, unstacked cookies forgotten. “Could you get me the book on the shelf by the store cupboard, the one with the picture of the daisy on the front cover my dear?”

  “This one?” The book rounds the corner, held by the spine between two grubby-nailed fingers.

  “That’s a buttercup, dear one. You haven’t been paying enough attention to Aunty Clem have you?”

  “Sorry, Nan. Flowers are flowers.” Muttered words follow about Aunty Clem that Nan pretends she does not hear.

  Nan’s left eye twitches. She decides to try a different tack with her botanically challenged favourite apprentice. “The one in cuneiform with the Linear B gloss?”

  Shuffling of pages and another book makes its appearance, Nan sighs a gentle sigh of satisfaction. “That’s the one. And if you have a moment could you get me a splash of the herbal tea? Oh, and I think I may be needing my primer on Akkadian too.”

  “Already done, Nan. The primer that is, the tea I’ll go get.”

  Nan isn’t sure if she should take offence at that, there’s a hint that the young lady might think her ancient language skills are something less than perfect. She decides to take the high path.

  Silence in the kitchen, followed by more shuffling and squinting.

  “Awful language. So many pointy little wedges. Probably made more sense in clay…”

  “And there’s your tea Nan. Piping hot on a cold dark day.” Are we expecting visitors?”

  “Yes, but I don’t think it’s likely to be tonight. Definitely a visitor and definitely soon. Heh, quite the VIP.” She calls another of her little family who nods a greeting as she enters. “Elspeth dear, could you read up on the welcoming rituals for one of the Vampire Masters.”

  Muttered disapproval.

  “Yes, I know what Grams said about them.

  “Extinct and unpleasant?” The grey witch offers.

  “Yes. That. But I’m also sure you remember what she said about being stubborn and disapproving and muttering in general. It’s a plague around here, it is.”

  A snort.

  “All going well, Nan?” The first witch is eating some of gingerbread fragments from the baking tray. Cheeky maid. Initiative. Endearing characteristic of the younger generation Nan supposes.

  A particularly obtuse passage in the Akkadian, a half hearted explanation and the equivalent of a Minoan shrug in the gloss. “Oh dear, some of this is very convoluted and there is rather too much missing, or badly copied. Very disappointing.”

  A step forward in a shower of crumbs. “Do you want any h…”

  “We do have a debt.” Loud and with a heavy current of ‘leave me alone’, the younger witch steps back. “That’s clear as day. That means we need to repay it. No good getting a reputation for welching on our debts. We’re not Fae.”

  The other witches swap looks. Nan’s dislike of the Fan was ingrained and set in stone when they had disappeared when the world had taken its nose dive.

  “I suppose the question is how to do that without hitting too many of these nasty little lacunae.”

  Blank stare. “Gaps, little one.”

  “Don’t like Latin. No good at it.” There’s a hint of irony to the other witch’s comment that flies well over Nan’s head. Latin is the one language which Nan refuses to be any good at.

  “I know dear.” She reaches the end of the entry, it has flipped through a dozen languages of various vintages some of which she doesn’t recognise, not that she’d ever admit it, but the gist is clear enough. Context is everything as Grams used to say.

  This Master is very, very old. “Hopefully he’s not too pedantic and we can get everything sorted out with a little common sense. Hmm. Old.” A chuckle. “We really shouldn’t annoy him too much…”

  Glint of mischief in the old Coven mistress’s eyes.

  “Nan…”

  Elspeth strolls across from the stool in the corner, before the youngest witch can say anymore carrying the greetings book, mostly sketches. Some bloodstains. “Annoying a vampire master. Didn’t think we were going to do that anymore.”

  She lets her sentence settle, then adds after a beat.

  “As they’re extinct. And monstrous.” She taps pointedly at the bloodstains, dark wine on the vellum. The youngest witch looks over Nan’s shoulder dropping more crumbs on to the book before she is shooed away by Elspeth.

  “You have lessons, young lady. Confusing buttercups and daisies? You need to spend less time on that phone of yours…”

  “Come on Nan…”

  “Out, you.”

  Harried out of the kitchen in a flurry of robes and flapping hands the youngest witch disappears into the quiet warmth of the forest between worlds and the bustle of the witches’ little settlement.

  Elspeth clears the kitchen as Nan stitches together a plan. When the older woman looks up, Elspeth is looking down at her with one of her trademark ‘concerned looks’.

  She may as well be wagging a finger and tutting.

  “Seriously though, Nan. Vampires?”

  A shrug of elderly shoulders. “They weren’t all that bad dear, not back then when they had chiefs. They’re like dogs, with a good master they can be faithful and true, without them…” She leaves that hanging. “Big schemers amongst themselves you know. Endless. Hardly worth keeping up with as they all sort of cancelled each other out.”

  “I saw Grams left a note...” Elspeth offers. “I wasn’t eavesdropping, I noticed when I was checking I had the right book.”

  “It’s fine dear. I’d rather you were reading than not.” Nan runs a wrinkled finger along the carefully written note set beside the entry detailing the latest debt owed.

  Faded blue ink in a doctor’s scrawl, a ragged scratch at the end of each word as if the writer had been in a hurry to move on to the next.

  “It really was quite surprising. You know how much she hated anything written on the books, vandalism she used to call it. Pure unadulterated barbarism.” Nan quirks a smile at the memories of the former Coven leader’s stern school-marmly visage. “Do you remember what she did to Anny after she put a smiley face besides the story about her and the unicorn?”

  “I do.”

  “I should reverse that one day. You can only eat burnt toast for so long.”

  “…so. What did she say?”

  “Didn’t you look, dear girl?”

  “I saw the writing. I didn’t read it.” Elspeth tips her head to one side. “Merovingian uncial is… just awful.”

  Nan nods sagely, “Let me help you, it is a bit of an acquired taste…” she dips her head down and pulls out a small monocle which she peers through, myopically. “Oh no. Oh dear goddess no. N.B. A breakfast beside a death bed? The answer is before you. Do not irritate the vampire. That bit is underlined. Twice.”

  Elspeth closes her eyes, pondering. “Was that a crossword clue? Delphic, Nan. Delphic.”

  “A good clue should be as clear as a mountain stream and as obvious as the nose on your face. Not Delphic dear. More Laconic, even that might be a hint. Relating to the Spartans. Wasn’t that a movie back before?” Nan twists her fingers and reforms the pieces of gingerbread on the baking tray into a perfect finger before taking it and scrunching thoughtfully. “And never Delphic, that’s one thing she didn’t approve of. What was it again?”

  “Volcano fumes Nan.”

  “Bless. And I have no idea what this little missive means. We should have taken those bloody crosswords away from her years back,” Nan’s commentary is speeding up as the implications of missing the point of whatever it was that Grams had wished to leave behind her regarding this Vampire work their way through her brain. “You should have seen her last will and testament, not sure we gave anything to the right person. So sudden. And all that death at the time. So many bequests to settle” A sigh. “And I will need to strain my poor old eyes
to do the background reading, oh my poor old eyes.”

  “Glasses Nan. And I’ve told you, you need to give that man his monocle back. He hasn’t even lost it yet and it’s completely the wrong prescription for you.”

  Nan ignores the last comment though that spark of mischief flares up in her rheumy eyes as she replies. “Thank you dear. I’ll see if I can find my glasses when I get a chance. They must be somewhere.”

  The complete lack of sincerity sits between them like a dog in a fresh-run bath before Elspeth bubbles out a chuckle which Nan ignores, a picture of elderly innocence. The older witches often adopted this look to confound the less experienced.

  A benefit of looking however you wished.

  “Anyhow, this gentleman has requested a rescue and I suppose he’ll just have to forego the pleasantries until I’ve worked through Gram’s gobbledygook. That does mean that he’s going to be needing…”

  “A rescue?”

  “Yes dear. If you could sort that out, that would be wonderful. And some strawberries on the way back too. Season’s right for jam making.”

  Elspeth nods her ascent. “That’s fine Nan. Where is he?”

  Nan pulls a map from the scroll cases next to the door and rolls it out. Pointing, she traces the wood ways to the target.

  “Not far then. Though… when would be propitious? That’s pretty deep inside the Protectorate. I assume our Island friends or their lackeys have him so we may need to time this right?”

  “You will. I need…” The younger witch from earlier runs past the kitchen window, silky black hair streaming behind her as she chases after a giggling throng of orphans wiggling her fingers menacingly.

  Nan catches her eye just as she passes and she screeches to a stop.

  “Perfect timing dear, would you be able to get me a toad?”

  “It would have been quicker if I’d…”

  A small amphibian floats through the window, long hooked legs bicycling in the air.