The Balance Omnibus

by Alan Baxter

  Isiah held up a hand. ‘It’s irrelevant. Faith’s destiny is her own. We need a way to get more on the ONC’s activities and Faith is the best option we have, especially as we now know quite a lot about her. And the fact that she is in love with one of their leaders could make it more dangerous, but it could also lead us to more information than some regular schmoe might provide. This knowledge actually makes her more valuable to us. Regardless of what may happen to her, we have a bigger agenda.’

  Petra made a face that showed she disapproved of Isiah’s assessment. She said nothing but her eyes spoke volumes.

  ‘I know,’ Isiah said. ‘I wish we had other options. I often wish I had other options, but things are moving apace. I’ll protect her if I can.’

  The Sorcerer sat in meditation, hands resting on his knees. The house on Braden Estate was all but empty now, everything cleared and tidied, sheets over the remaining furniture, cupboards and closets emptied. The front door was locked and bolted, the gates at the driveway heavily chained and padlocked. Even the cellar door above him was locked from the outside by Chris at the Sorcerer’s instruction. The Dominus of the ONC watched remotely through the astral plane as Chris stood staring at the estate gates, playing nervously with the padlock key in his hand. He was concerned, confused. Like Jake he had wanted to help directly, to be involved. He felt left out, his feelings hurt. But the secrecy was the only real protection.

  Eventually Chris pocketed the key and climbed into his car, backing away from the gates. As he sped off up the road to join Jake so they could make their way together to Australia, the Sorcerer pulled his attention back to his own location. Most of the British ONC had already arrived in Australia or were on their way there. The various Optimates from around the country were coordinating and managing things well. Frank was well in control of the North American and Canadian members, supervising those Optimates below him to organise large numbers of people on the move. Other European countries, South and Central American Gathers, the few small groups from the sub-continent and Asia, all were converging on the large island continent of Australia. They swarmed over the country, milling around in hundreds of locations under hundreds of invented scenarios, all awaiting word of the location where they were to Gather for the great moment.

  The Sorcerer drew in a long, deep breath. He felt drained. Weak, insubstantial, stretched beyond his capacity. The mundane worry was debilitating enough, but the pressure of his magical ministrations was beginning to take its toll, physically, mentally, emotionally. A muffled moan made him flicker open his eyes and he looked down at Chris’s parting gift. The young, terrified, reddened eyes that stared back at him pleaded silently. Never so much power as that gained from innocence stripped violently away.

  He put one finger to his lips. ‘Shh, little girl. You are more important than you could imagine.’

  A more resonant moan sounded from behind him, emanating from the large stone sarcophagus that still contained his ward. The centrepiece of it all. The Sorcerer sat crosslegged on a threadbare rug, his back against the foot of the sarcophagus, the young girl bound and gagged before him. He thought of Lars and the trust he had placed in him. Lars was a devout follower and had always been zealously trustworthy. And powerful. Now he simply had to hope that Lars had done everything exactly as had been asked of him.

  The Sorcerer sucked in another deep breath. He was procrastinating and he knew it. But he was more than a little scared. He needed to make sure he got this right. He knew how important it was and yet even he did not really know the exact reasons for his actions. More and more he felt like the puppet of his god. Could he really be sure he was acting on the instructions of a god? He stiffened, his back arching, the rasping, cajoling voice sliding through his brain again.

  ‘Yes,’ the Sorcerer hissed through gritted teeth. ‘Yes, of course.’ He gasped in a deep breath. ‘Who gets too close?’ He shuddered, miniature seizure. ‘To the Channel?’ Then for several seconds he sat, virtually paralysed, and listened. Then he slumped, released. ‘Very well,’ he whispered, his voice straining in a tight throat.

  He took a few seconds to gather himself again, drew his knife. He uttered violent words and the young girl bound before him straightened and stiffened, her eyes widening further with terror. She whimpered around the cloth gag in her mouth, tears streamed down her cheeks. As though he was unwrapping a package of no particular importance the Sorcerer set about the ropes with his knife. Once they were clear he cut away the girl’s clothes, throwing rope and garments aside, forgotten. He cut away the gag, but the girl, frozen and held by his spell, could still make little more than strangled sounds, breathless screams. But she tried with all her might to make more noise.

  He turned her body so her head and feet were in line with the sarcophagus. He stood at her feet, looking from her up to his charge. Then he took his blade and drew it across the soft, white flesh of her left arm. He tipped the blade, letting the blood from the laceration gather along its silver length, then flicked it out to the side. He repeated the action on her right arm, flicking her blood to the other side while she screamed a distant-sounding wail of agony and terror. He repeated the cuts on both legs, flicking her blood first ahead of the sarcophagus, then behind. Cardinal points marked, he invoked again, his words stilted, harsh. The words themselves seemed to take life, sweeping and swirling around the cellar like ghosts, dragging at the Sorcerer’s hair and coat. The little girl’s hair swam about her head in arcane static.

  The Sorcerer’s voice rose in volume and power. The room seemed to bend and flex. He called upon the power of the Custodis Cruor and sensed them twisting and squirming in their viscous pool, their energy feeding him, empowering him. Was one more enough? Could he raise enough energy with ten more?

  He shouted the words, yelling above the swirling, screaming, twisting room, all the time forcing himself to work within the shields he had erected. His voice cracking as he yelled, the Sorcerer raised his blade above his head and dropped to his knees, astride the young girls legs. The Custodis keened in their cavern, the girl screamed and the Sorcerer shouted barbed, sharpened words and plunged his knife into the girl’s chest. Dragging the blade down her torso, he thrust his hand between rent ribs and closed his old, gnarled fingers around her still beating heart, ripped it free. As he held it aloft he barked the final words of his incantation and reality ripped apart. The Sorcerer’s own howl was one of terror as he and everything around him were sucked between the Realms.

  As reality itself swirled and stretched around him, the Sorcerer felt his magic cocooning his journey. With sudden, soul-wrenching abruptness he slammed into something hard. Heat and sound and the rushing of air surrounded him. The sarcophagus was before him, the blood soaked, split corpse of the child between his knees and a wail arose to fill the sudden silence. The wail was from the sarcophagus. He looked around, barely noticing the bright light streaming in tight shards through gaps in the wooden planks of the barn he had appeared in. Rising onto one knee, twisting around, he made a noise of relief. There, tied in the corner, eyes like saucers from surprise and terror, another young girl sat, red hair and freckles.

  Standing, trying to ignore the unstable wobble in his stride, he grabbed up the child. She struggled violently, screaming and thrashing in his arms. Ignoring her protestations, he strode to the sarcophagus and held her over it. His blade appeared before the her and slit from one ear to the other. Her breath flooded out like wind through dry grass as her blood flooded into the sarcophagus.

  The girl fell limply over his hands and her blood eventually stopped flowing. The Sorcerer staggered back and threw the tiny corpse off to the side where she landed twisted and crumpled, rag doll parody. He sank to the ground, his hands catching his face, as he gasped for breath and tried to steady his hammering heart. His head ached like it would explode from the effort of his sorcery.

  A voice sounded from outside the small barn. ‘Dominus? It is you? All is well?’

  The Sorcerer raised
his head, drawing in a long, shuddering breath. ‘Yes, Lars, all is well. You did a good job. Don’t come in. I’ll join you in a moment. There is something important that we need to discuss.’ By Yath-vados, it was hot here.

  Faith was disturbed. She left the house with her nerves in tatters, yet refused to be cowed by her recent experience in the park. There were things happening to her and around her that would take a lot of getting used to and she would not let them beat her down. If only Lars were around. His work took him away more and more. He only seemed to spend brief periods at the house, an hour or two here and there. He would see her and his affection for her was undiminished, but there remained little opportunity for real conversation. She wanted to express her concerns, take his counsel.

  No matter. She would persevere and help herself along. And she would start that process by getting out into the world again. That thing in the park was a rude awakening, but she was better prepared now. There were obviously things to be extremely wary of out in the open, things she had thought only existed in nightmares. It made her head spin to think of all the people, just about everyone, that went about their daily lives completely unaware. She had been one of them. This time she would be more wary, observe more carefully. This time she wouldn’t try to penetrate anything that seemed constructed, disturbing creatures best left alone.

  She walked slowly, keeping herself as invisible as possible, watching people around her. She found a café and sat outside at a table on the footpath. A waiter, apparently very sad, heart-broken was her guess, took her order for coffee and she sat and watched people coming and going, living their lives.

  As she sat and sipped, she began to get the distinct feeling that someone was spying on her. She felt a sudden chill as her perspective changed from the watcher to the watched. She looked around, but could discern nothing particularly untoward. There was a slightly mad looking woman with a tiny fluffy dog sitting nearby, but she was simply mad. Maybe eccentric was a kinder word. There were a couple of guys sitting just inside the window, their faces close together as they giggled and cajoled each other. All their presence indicated was love, oblivious to anyone or anything else. Other patrons talked or sat alone, listening to earphones or reading papers and magazines. The wait staff were busy and harassed, this café, like every other, slightly understaffed. A woman with a child in a stroller came in and she was utterly boring. People walked by on the street with nothing outstanding to notice. A couple sat on a bench at a bus stop across the road, canoodling. A bus pulled in as Faith watched and the couple were still there when it pulled away again. Obviously not their bus. A man walked a dog, his shorts a little too short, even for the hot weather. Then again, this was Paddington, next door to the gayest district in Sydney. The gayest suburb in Australia would be a fair call. Sydney itself had been described as a gay city, if such a thing were possible. So, who was watching her?

  As Faith searched, her eyes busy while her body remained casually at ease, the sensation passed. Then it returned. It felt somehow different, but she was convinced it was there. She sat up straighter, turning in her chair to look back into the café. And again the sensation passed. Was someone playing games with her? She waited, this time alert, to see if she could detect a direction when the sensation came next. Then it did, from behind. She spun around again and the feeling drained away. But it had definitely been behind her, someone watching her back. The couple inside the window were still lost in each other, the woman with the stroller was feeding apple sauce to her infant, other people still engrossed in their music or reading. No one was paying her any attention at all.

  She turned back in her seat. The old mad lady was looking at her with one raised eyebrow. Faith smiled awkwardly.

  ‘You all right, love?’ the old woman asked. She had a look of disdain, twist of the lips, as though she thought Faith a little unhinged.

  Pot calling the kettle black. ‘I’m fine.’ Faith smiled again, but she knew it was unconvincing.

  ‘You seem a little jumpy there. Hopped up on something, are you?’

  Faith was surprised. ‘No, no,’ she laughed, realising how she must have looked. ‘Just... no, nothing.’

  The old woman harrumphed, an air of moral superiority about her. She plainly didn’t believe that Faith was unaffected by something. Then the feeling came again. This time from somewhere off to her right. Being careful not to appear jumpy like before, Faith looked casually along the path. It was busy with pedestrians, but no one was paying any attention to her. Another bus pulled up to the stop opposite. As it pulled away, the couple were still sat on the bench, holding hands. Faith wondered how many buses would pass before theirs came along. They seemed completely bland people as far as Faith could tell. Perhaps even too bland. There was nothing interesting about them at all.

  Faith looked around the café and the street again. Everyone had something about them, some sense of purpose or emotional state. Those two over the road were like a blank canvas. Faith turned her attention back to them and blinked in surprise. They were gone. She hadn’t noticed another bus. Perhaps they had got bored of waiting and hopped into a taxi. She waited for the sensation of being watched to come again, wary and slightly excited.

  Alex and Giles leaned back in creaking wooden chairs by a saltwater pool in their hostel. They wore only swimming trunks and their ONC wristbands and they each held a beer, insulated by a neoprene stubbie holder with the hostel’s name and logo on it. ‘This is the life, eh?’ Alex raised his beer in a salute.

  Giles grinned. ‘It certainly is.’ He returned the gesture. ‘Drinking cold beer in the morning by a pool, in blazing hot sunshine, at this time of year. Talk about weird.’

  ‘That’s the southern hemisphere for you, my friend.’

  ‘Yep. I could get used to this. How long do you think we should hang around here, though?’

  ‘I dunno. I guess it doesn’t really matter where we hang around.’

  Giles looked around himself. ‘We could get word at any time. I’d like to know where we’re supposed to go.’

  Alex nodded, drinking more beer. ‘I know. I mean, it’s bloody nice up here, but we could get called to Melbourne or even Perth or something. Those places are thousands of miles away. And how are we getting called anyway?’

  ‘I dunno. It all seems a bit surreal really. We’ll have to rely on the Optimates to give us the word and, hopefully, an idea of how to get there. I suppose it’ll all work out. Johnny went to Sydney, you know.’

  Alex shrugged. ‘Did he? I know that Tamsin and her mate, that blond chick, they went to Adelaide. We must be all over this place like a rash. Still, fuck it. Whatever happens, this is a nice holiday! I’m glad for this if nothing else.’

  Giles nodded, staring absently across the pool.

  ‘Aye, aye, look out.’ Alex gestured with his beer at two young backpackers strolling towards the pool in tiny bikinis. Giles sat up a bit straighter, grinning. ‘Let’s hope the Optimates doesn’t call us just yet,’ said Alex with a wink. He turned to face the approaching girls again. ‘Hello, ladies. Just arrived?’

  12

  ‘She’s strong, but very inexperienced.’

  Isiah nodded, looking thoughtfully at Petra as she spoke. ‘You think we can turn her?’

  Petra shrugged. ‘Impossible to know. The truth is that I can glean a lot of general information about her from a distance, but she knew she was being watched. If I tried to dig any deeper, she would home in on me in an instant.’

  ‘We need to talk to her then. It’s a risk.’

  ‘Of course it is. I suppose we need to decide if it’s a risk worth taking.’

  Isiah pursed his lips in thought. ‘We have little choice.’

  ‘So how do we do it?’

  They strolled back towards the ONC headquarters as they discussed their strategy. The streets of Paddington could be very quiet, in spite of the suburb’s proximity to the city. A gentrified suburb, bearing the great irony of so many places like it. It had started out
as a suburb removed some few kilometers from the city centre, where the poor folk and the workers lived, out of sight, out of mind. They built their rows of small terraces and scraped by under the oppression of the city folk with all the money. Then the years rolled by, the city grew, swelling like a tumour, and the small suburb of the poor was swallowed up. The poor had to keep moving ever further away and the wealthy began squabbling over the houses that were left behind. Now a house in Paddington would cost anyone more than a million dollars. And that’s why it was so often quiet. If you could afford a million dollars for your town house you probably spent long hours at work to pay the mortgage. Or perhaps away in your beach house for the weekend to escape the clamour and grind of the city.

  Throughout the suburb were hundreds of small alleyways running between the rows of terraces, back gates standing like sentries facing each other across narrow strips of litter-strewn concrete. High fences and walls kept the horrors of the city back from the million dollar sanctuaries. Leaning against one such gate, a block away from the ONC house, Isiah and Petra stopped to wait. They chatted and giggled, pausing to kiss or hug whenever the occasional passer-by came a bit too close. And they watched. It was a pleasant few hours they spent in each other’s company, waiting.

  Eventually Petra pushed Isiah back, cutting off his affections. He watched with a hurt expression while Petra cocked her head to one side, as if listening to a distant sound. ‘She’s coming.’

  He stepped back, seeming to meld with the colours of the fences around him like a chameleon. Petra nodded, impressed. ‘Nice trick.’

  ‘Trick? Yeah, I’m a regular conjurer.’

  They both smirked, then Petra stepped out into the main street. ‘Oh, excuse me, could you help me a moment?’

  Isiah could see Petra, see her friendly, open expression as she spoke. The person she was speaking to was out of his sight, but he knew it was Faith. He had come to trust Petra’s senses implicitly. Her subtlety was truly remarkable. Then he heard Faith speak.