DIRE : TIME (The Dire Saga Book 3)

by Andrew Seiple

  We made our way back to the worship hall, and I looked down at Unstoppable as he shivered and gasped. Sweat rolled from him in an endless stream, soaking through his boiler suit and dripping to the floor. Dottie had joined Bryson, and was rummaging around in her purse.

  I hadn’t expected to feel as much concern as I did. I’d known him barely a few days, but... well, I liked him. He was just so damn easy-going, and always ready with a joke or a kind word.

  “What’s wrong with him?” I asked.

  “Werewolves are often contagious,” Dottie replied, her face creased with worry.

  “She thought he was immune to diseases!”

  “It’s more of a curse, not really a disease! Spreads like one, just...” Dottie waved her hand, then exclaimed as she found what she was looking for. “Here! Powdered wolfsbane! Swallow it, quick!” Unstoppable grabbed the small jar and tossed it back in one go.

  Then he coughed, choked, and pounded his chest. Bryson clamped his hand over Unstoppable’s mouth, prevented any of the precious medicine from getting coughed out.

  “Magic cheats,” Bryson said. “Interacts strangely with powers. At times they’re compatible, other times they’re not. Let’s hope that this is one of those times where the power defeats the supernatural, because if it doesn’t...”

  “What?” I thought about it. “Oh. Oh.” The things could only be killed with silver. They’d regenerate from anything else.

  Unstoppable’s regeneration would heal anything.

  I nodded, staring. If he turned, and his power worked with his altered form, then we wouldn’t have a way to put him down.

  Put him down... I rubbed my face.

  “Unacceptable. She’s not losing a friend, here.”

  “I like the way... you think... lady,” he gasped, grinning.

  “Do you feel any different?” Dottie peered in his eyes, holding a votive candle aloft to see in the darkness.

  “Doesn’t hurt... as much,” he coughed.

  “Wolfsbane’s poison. You took a dose big enough to kill twenty men. Hopefully that does it.”

  The unspoken if it doesn’t, then... lingered in the air.

  The silence was broken by German words. A man spoke outside. “Well well well. You are in quite an annoying spot.”

  I considered the high, thin windows, looked to Henri. “Give her a boost?”

  He blinked, then moved up, made a step of his hands.

  I put my hand on his shoulder, paused as a though struck me. “One moment.” A flick of the switch and my Tesla Deflector hummed to life. No point in putting my head up unprotected, just in case a sniper was waiting to put a bullet through it.

  The crowd of werewolves remained; in fact it had grown. Perhaps a hundred out there, keeping a good radius around the church. They’d fallen silent, and their red eyes stared unblinking at the front door. With a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, I saw that some of them were very short. The shortest were usually wearing remnants of children’s clothes. One was all of two feet long, torn swaddling half-off its body. None had been spared.

  “Come now! Surely someone among you speaks the tongue of the Fatherland!” I zeroed in on the voice. Across the street, in the doorway of the town hall, stood a man in dark clothes. He wore a German greatcoat but had neither an officer’s hat nor a helmet, his bald head bare and tattooed with odd symbols. A monocle sparkled over one eye, and he was leaning on a cane topped with a dragon or serpent of some sort. He was smiling, and I hated him on sight.

  A thought occurred to me. “Do you speak Russian?” I asked in that language.

  He sighed. “German. Do you speak it, woman?” Still speaking in German.

  “You sure you don’t speak Russian?”

  “Is there anyone else there who can speak German? Come now, I know Bryson is among you. He at least can speak a civilized tongue.”

  “Bryson, you speak Russian, right?”

  “Da.” Bryson responded, staring up at me. “Why?”

  I switched to German. “Alright, her German’s shakier but we’ll give it a try.”

  “Ah, the mysterious time traveler, yes? Or are you the shrinking British violet? I doubt that very much, given your garbling of pronouns.”

  “The first statement is correct.”

  “So formal. Very well then. I am Herr Mitternacht, and you are...”

  “Uninterested in giving her name to sorcerers.” Dottie had mentioned that was a bad thing. Between Timetripper’s advice to dodge paradox and keep my name incognito and Dottie’s information, I saw no reason to enlighten this guy.

  “Well, it is a moot point now. You shall end here, and I will torture it out of your fellow time-traveling colleague when I have the time. Rather impressed there, to tell the truth. He is quite resistant to the usual drugs.”

  “Wow. What a surprise.” Sarcasm entered my tone. I was pretty sure there wasn’t a single substance that Timetripper hadn’t eaten, snorted, injected, or otherwise taken. Even without his powers, there probably wasn’t a drug in existence that he didn’t have a tolerance for.

  He’d just given away an important piece of information, though. Would he give up more? The temptation to monologue had overcome him, and I saw no reason not to honor this most useful tradition of high villainy with the respect it was due.

  Now how did heroes do it? Ah, yes. “You fiend! You’ve kidnapped her friend?”

  His smile grew, as he hugged the cane to him. “Oh yes. We had to turn over Tesla, what a pity, but Der Füehrer had no use for your pathetic companion. In fact, once we confirmed that he was one of the latest wave of assassins, we were given permission to do with him as we would. And I shall!”

  Well, at least he wasn’t going to up and kill him. I wasn’t sure how that would work with Timetripper. Even if he was de-powered, could he be killed? His ability to reset from death always seemed like more of an innate quality to me, something beyond his control and inherent to his state of being.

  In fact, killing him might restore his powers. Maybe? That was to be avoided. If he got his powers back and I wasn’t around, he might be tempted to depart this era without me.

  Mitternacht coughed into one hand. He looked like he was waiting for something. What?

  Oh, wait, the banter. I’d been quiet for too long. Hm, hm, what would Quantum say...

  “You won’t get away with this!” I yelled back.

  “On the contrary, my dear woman, I already have!” He chortled. “Once Unstoppable succumbs to the curse, and becomes a proper Spawn of Fenris, then you will be forced from your temporary sanctuary. And even if he withstands the call of the moon, Fenris’ children grow more powerful as it rises! At the zenith, they shall be able to break through the old wards on the stones. It is only a matter of time, really!” He brought the cane down on the cobblestones with glee. “They are unlikely to kill all of you. But you cannot dodge their teeth forever! Once you are bitten your will shall go against that of a God. Unlike mine, it shall break. Then the pack will convey you north, and you shall be my guests at Schloss Mitternacht. Truly, there is no escape! The plan is foolproof!”

  I glanced back to Bryson. “You getting all that?” I asked in Russian.

  “Da.”

  “Anything else we should try to get out of him?”

  “Ask him about the priest.”

  “Priest?”

  “The corpse on the altar.”

  How to broach the topic? I gave it a little thought, and switched back to German.

  “Don’t be so sure about those wards!” I scoffed. “The priest’s power is strong, even after his death.”

  Mitternacht’s laughter was shrill, and filled with scorn. “The priest’s power? Ha! You show your ignorance in every word! The priest had no power. If his sanctuary wasn’t built upon a fae circle, my children would be among you in minutes. No, the priest had no power.” He grinned. “He certainly didn’t use any when I cut his throat, and gave him to my God. That kickstarted the ritual, and desecrate
d the church quite nicely, I might add.”

  “Oh my goodness,” Dottie whispered from behind us, and Bryson shushed her.

  Mitternacht reached into a pocket, pulled out a watch on a fob, and snapped it open. “A pity. As much as I have enjoyed enlightening you, other duties call. I must return home, to prepare my part of the Füehrer’s ritual. If that indestructible oaf arrives before I do, I’ll never hear the end of it.”

  What?

  “Auf Wiedersehen, my dear. Try not to die too quickly. I imagine you’ll make a fine bitch.” He laughed, and faded back into the darkness of the building, shutting the door behind him. It took him two tries to shut the door, he was limping as he went, supporting himself on the cane.

  So that was what a sinister monologue was like from the other side. Kind of interesting, actually, to see a proper villain at work. Pity it wasn’t under less involved circumstances.

  I reached down, patted Henri on the head. He lowered me with a sigh of relief, and rubbed his arms.

  “Probably going to travel by Sturm Crow,” Bryson muttered. “Not much chance of capturing him before he leaves, back to his Schloss Mitternacht.”

  I stared at him. “We’re trapped in a church surrounded by werewolves, with our best combatant cursed and our sanctuary crumbling as the moon rises, and you’re concerned about capturing him?”

  Bryson barked laughter. “Ah, sorry. This must seem strange to you. This is the sort of thing that Nikola and I have been dealing with for years. This is our life now.” He looked away, made a show of fussing over Unstoppable. “Ever since that fateful night in nineteen-oh-eight, ever since the FBI raid, life’s been nothing like normal. Tends to skew things. So no, this isn’t any worse than our running battle against La Société des Fantȏmas, or the Mushroom Men of Madagascar, or the affair of the seven sarcophagi in the Emperor’s tomb.”

  I blinked. That’s right, he had been at this for decades. Not proper superheroing, not by my era’s definition of the term, but it was definitely a life of action and adventure. And if he wasn’t worried, I saw no reason that I should be. Which now that I thought of it, might be the effect he intended. Bryson was canny, I could see him doing this just to keep morale intact.

  “I can’t see a way out at the minute, true, but all the cards are on the table and we understand the game, now. It’s up to us to come up with a way to win.” He offered me a short smile, and I knew he was worried. His normal expression was a frown, even when things were going well.

  I nodded. “Alright. Capturing him is probably off the table. So let’s think. What do we have?”

  “Henri’s distortion power.” Bryson raised a finger. “A silver-headed cane. Your MAUSER. A couple of Tesla Deflectors, which are proof against bullets. My valise full of spare parts, good for a couple of inventions. Miss Hampston’s expertise with the occult. Unstoppable, debilitated though he is. A sanctuary that allows us time to plan. Am I missing anything?”

  I ticked through the list, shook my head. “She thinks that’s about it.” I thumbed my Deflector off, no sense in wasting the batteries before we had troubles. “Although the MAUSER’s low on fuel, sadly. The nearest source of diesel is outside. Past the werewolves.”

  “Henri, can you switch your power?” Unstoppable asked. “Something more useful than the distortion field?”

  Henri shook his head. “It is not my power, but a given one. I would have to contact Monsieur Égalité to receive a new power, and without the telepathy I have no way to do that. He will return the telepathy to me tomorrow morning.”

  It would be decided well before then. We had half the night to come up with an answer, and failure meant maulings. That gave us a time frame to work with.

  I glanced over to our resident supersoldier. “Unstoppable? Are you feeling better?”

  “Got a hell of a headache, but I’m not shaking anymore. Don’t know if that’s good or bad.”

  “Just lie still.” Dottie patted his arm. “I think it’s halted for now, but you don’t want to exert yourself. That might accelerate things.”

  So no more fighting for him. Okay, next question. “Do we have any other silver besides the cane? Something to melt down, perhaps? Make some bullets or shrapnel?”

  Bryson looked to Dottie. She shook her head. “A small knife, but it won’t go far. Sometimes these old churches have relics, but with the look of the rest of this village, I doubt it. They’d be on display here, and I don’t see any.”

  Well, that was all right. I didn’t really want to kill these people if I could help it. They were victims here, not in control of themselves. Could we save them? Maybe. We needed to know more about this curse.

  “What can you tell us about werewolves, Dottie?” I took a pew. “Everything you’ve got.”

  “That’s quite a lot.”

  “We’ve got time. Some of it, anyway.”

  She sighed, took a seat in another pew. “There are several different types. We can rule out the skinshifters, and the ancestral lycanthropes. That leaves the infected sort as the most likely. Not really a disease but it acts like one, more or less.”

  “More in this case. Lots more.”

  “That concerns me. There shouldn’t be this many.”

  “No?”

  “Well, no, of course not. If all these people got that way from biting, then the world would be a sea of werewolves and not a single normal bloke among them. There wouldn’t be anything but werewolves.”

  “So why aren’t there?” I considered the matter. “She finds it unlikely that the idiot outside has a ritual like this and has managed to refrain from using it out of logic and sensibility. He doesn’t seem the sort. More arrogant really.”

  “Well, the Nazis have used werewolves before. But never on this scale. I mean, it’s not impossible, but a curse needs a power source. You spread it out over this many people at once, it would barely be effective. They’d get ill-tempered and growly and occasionally bitey, but they wouldn’t have fur or be able to heal as well. It’d be weaker.”

  “So he has a power source for the curse. A better one than normal, yes?”

  “He must.” Her eyes went wide. “Wait. He mentioned something about a god’s will?”

  “Yes...” I rubbed my chin. “He said that when we were bitten, it would be our will against a God’s. Implied that he’d pitted his will against the God’s and succeeded.”

  “Oh dear heavens. And he called them Fenris’ children, didn’t he?”

  “Not seeing where this is going.”

  “Loge. He’s bound Loge.”

  The night air filled with howling and barking, a cacophony of madness and lupine rage, and we startled, either diving for cover, drawing weapons, or simply freezing in fear. For my own part I had my pistol in my hand and was looking around wildly, trying to find the cause for alarm. But it faded as fast as it came, replaced by a terrible stillness. They were listening, I thought. We’d gotten their attention.

  “She doesn’t know that name.”

  “Don’t say it. I think that’s what touched them off.” Dottie explained. “Powerful enough gods can hear their names spoken. Draws their attention.”

  “Is he, then?”

  “Sort of. Not too many people worship the Norse gods anymore.”

  “Norse then?” Bryson sighed. “Can’t say I’ve dealt with that pantheon overmuch. Now if it was Egyptian, that’d be a different story.”

  “Deal with many gods, do you?” Henri asked, his voice dry.

  Bryson patted his shoulder. “You have no idea.”

  “Okay. So how about we pray really hard?” Unstoppable said. “We’re in a church and Jesus Christ has gotta have more worshipers, right?”

  “You’d think that would work, but it’s trickier than that.” Dottie said. “Theologians have been arguing over how and when miracles manifest for years, and Christianity’s gotten so big there’s hundreds of little offshoots without rhyme or reason. Miracles aren’t just something you can wish for on a reliabl
e basis. Besides, the church has been desecrated.”

  “But not the fae circle it’s built around?” I ran a hand over the stone pillars. “Seems curious to build a church over an old pagan monument like this.”

  “Not when you think about it.” Dottie smiled. “People worshiped here for centuries, then the Christians move in and take over, so they co-opt the old place to show they’re in charge. Also it’s free architecture, don’t you know? Saves building materials. In places where it’s a friendly takeover, it’s even seen as part of the natural order of things. People worshiped here once, they still worship here now. It’s respect paid to the old ways without actually going against the church’s doctrine.”

  “So why isn’t the circle desecrated, when the church is? That’s her question.”

  “Well, this is an old circle. The local powers of nature probably weren’t very kind. To Christians blood sacrifice is anathema these days. To the old powers, it’s Wednesday.”

  I rubbed my chin. Something still didn’t click. “So why didn’t he wait in the church, instead of the town hall? This is the scene of his dark triumph or whatever, right? Desecrated church, a god on his side, fae appeased...” I stood and moved up to the corpse, looked it over. It was horrible, the poor old man had a hole in his robes that went clean through his chest. Organs and gore coated the altar, and a look of fright was frozen on his face.

  None of the injuries meant a thing to me. I'm bad at biology, and I know nothing of magic. Seeing this, I was rather glad for the fact.

  There was less blood than I’d thought, though. Beside the altar a wicked looking knife glinted, blade coated with gore. Perfectly good knife. Now why had he left that behind? “Hey Dottie? How do you do a werewolf...ritual...thing?”

  “He would have cut out the heart, and sacrificed it to Fenris, most savage of Lo— most savage of the Old God’s children.”

  “Can you check to see if the heart’s still in there?”

  “Doesn’t quite ring true to you either, does it?” Bryson asked. “The church would have been a perfect setting for a dark sorcerer. And if he’d won the fae’s approval, then well, where are they? And why aren’t they letting the werewolves through?”