Bad Cow (Oræl Rides to War Book 1)

by Andrew Hindle

  The ancient Imago placed the urn back on his dresser, then crossed back and picked up his suit. He gave it a hefty shake and ash filled the air. By the time it had cleared Canon had folded the suit neatly and laid it out on his bed, and Troy Haussman stood in the corner of the room.

  “Can’t you afford to buy a new suit?”

  Canon turned carefully to regard the spotty-faced man-child. Haussman had appeared without warning, as he’d done several times in the bright, fuzzy period since Canon’s awakening. Canon hadn’t been snuck up on for … well, since he had become a Vampire, around eleven hundred years ago. This was something new, something unprecedented and unsuspected, and that made it fascinating. Dangerous, to be sure, but fascinating. Just thinking about what it had done to him made the Vampire tremble. And then … it had transported him back here to his Sydney apartment, somehow. He wasn’t sure he understood what had happened. It was still emerging, like figures from mist, but what he saw…

  Unbelievable.

  Troy Haussman didn’t have quite the same presence as the other one, but there was something far more disturbing about him. Something he lacked that even the wrathful Angel had possessed.

  The Angel. Even as he eyed Troy Haussman, Canon’s mind shuddered back from the concept. In all his centuries on Earth, he had never even suspected such a thing existed. Angels. He’d always looked upon people with quiet scorn for believing in that sort thing. Angels. And their opposite number.

  “Afford a new suit, yes,” Canon answered, as the red-cardiganed Demon crossed the room and perched on the dresser. “Afford the questions that will result if I don’t pack this up and take it with me?” he shrugged easily, wondering once again what his body was made of, how it had been made to work again. Whether he could ever expect this … Demon … to tell him. “Perhaps I can, at that. The police in this part of the country are very manageable. But still … there’s a lot of valuable property in here. Why somebody would leave any of it, including a three thousand dollar suit lying in the hallway full of grit…”

  “I wouldn’t want a suit full of grit,” Troy said with a grimace.

  “Perhaps not,” Canon said, resisting the urge to mention that he would prefer a grit-filled suit that had been custom-tailored to this starchy piece of burlap that Haussman had stuffed him into. It would be extremely ungrateful. “But grit washes off,” he continued, crossing to his wardrobe and opening it to study the rest of his suits critically. He had travelled light – this was really more of a halfway house, since he hadn’t decided whether he was going to stay. And if he was, he’d get a new wardrobe made for him in the city. “I could throw it away or put it in a donation bin,” he said, pulling out a fresh suit, “but any homeless person wearing attire like this would either be mugged, or arrested for robbery, within an hour. Any attempt on the part of a charity to re-sell the garments for funds would raise questions. And as these suits are custom-tailored for me by appointment, they are quite easy to trace. The police would be right back over here again.”

  “So?” Troy said disdainfully. “What do we care if some bum gets beaten up?”

  “I don’t care,” Canon replied, and held up the suit. How could he explain to this boy, so obviously a product of neglected yet privileged upbringing, that wealth – the sort of wealth that spanned generations, or sustained immortals – did not come from discarding things, but from keeping them? That you could be as flashy and wasteful as you liked with the little things that the lower classes thought were so important, but that you held onto the big things? That yes, you could sometimes give, when it was beneficial to do so – but that under no circumstances could you share? “Do you want me to throw them all away? I can, if you like.”

  Troy glowered for a moment, petulant that the Vampire had cut short his ribbing. Then he smirked. “You think you’re going to avoid questions? You did notice the two cops you just booted out of here?”

  Canon shrugged again, unable to prevent a deep feeling of unease. The police officers had been hopelessly ignorant and out of their depth, but they’d known how long he’d been gone. And it had been more than a day. Maybe he should have questioned them more carefully, instead of chasing them away. But no … that would not have been safe. He would wait, and contact his legal people, and they could tell him what he’d missed. Then he would decide what his response would be. As he’d just told Haussman, the police were manageable.

  He reminded himself that his new companion might look and sound and behave like a seventeen-year-old American boy, but he wasn’t one. Or maybe he was, but that wasn’t all he was. And it was dangerous, how easy it was to forget that.

  And was he a companion, or patron?

  Or master?

  “They were just doing their jobs,” he said, aware that he’d been silent too long, and that Haussman was still smirking. He brushed down the coat lapels needlessly. “They probably got complaints about the noise, when I…”

  “When Barry Dell the Angel killed your ghouls, ripped your head off and turned you into a three-thousand-dollar bag of grit?”

  “Yes,” Canon said. “It was noisy.”

  “It was also a week ago,” Troy said.

  Canon nodded. “So that was what those police were here for,” he said, and hung the suit on the open closet door. He wondered how the Demon would react if he just started changing out of the clothes he was wearing. “And the weekend event where my absence was noted…”

  “Was the weekend after you died,” Troy confirmed.

  Canon nodded again. “The Westingford Orphans Charity.”

  “Orphans Charity?” Troy sniggered. “Really?”

  “The Westingford people found out I was in Sydney, and invited me,” Canon said. “I make a point of attending high-profile private events–”

  “Sorry you were indisposed,” Troy said, sounding bored.

  “Oh, it would be churlish of me to complain, given the circumstances.”

  “Churlish?” Troy sneered. “What are you, King Arthur?”

  “No,” Canon said, “although I did live in Camelot for a time.”

  Troy gaped very endearingly. “No shit, really?”

  “No, not really. Camelot is a myth, I’m just a wordy old bastard,” Canon said, and smiled thinly as Troy cackled, the sting over his own credulity soothed by the Vampire’s self-deprecation. Troy Haussman had a seventeen-year-old’s temperament, and was American to boot. Not the most emotionally stable combination, easily threatened by intellect, and coupled with whatever gifts the Demon had at his command, he was probably best stepped around carefully. “I’m just lucky you … fixed me?”

  “Oh yeah, I fixed you alright. Regenerated you from nothing but a skull-shaped charcoal briquette,” the Demon tilted his head. “Do you remember any of it?”

  Canon thought about this before answering. Some of the shapes emerging from the mist of his memory weren’t shapes he particularly wanted to see up-close and in detail. “I remember the … Angel…”

  “Barry Dell.”

  “Yes, Dell. I remember him holding me up, my head severed. I remember him making an awful pun about my being an Imago–”

  “Ooh, what was the pun?” Troy’s voice squeaked in his eagerness.

  “Something about Ima-gone,” Canon waved a hand. “Then he threw me into the fire.”

  “Ouch,” Troy said, clearly far more interested in the bad pun than the agonising near-death experience that had accompanied it. “What a way to Ima-go.”

  “Or Ima-not-go, as the case may be,” Canon said, and his feeble response was rewarded with another cackle. “I also remember something after that, a disjointed sequence. It’s difficult to keep track of time, in sensory deprivation. Or perhaps I should say when all senses are replaced with pain.”

  “Yeah,” Troy said, still not sounding very sympathetic. “Well, it was almost a week before I tracked your feathery friend down and picked you up. He was in transit most of that time and I didn’t bother chasing him,” Canon could tel
l there was something Haussman wasn’t sharing with him about that week, something the Demon had probably been doing that he didn’t want to share with the Vampire, but he didn’t press. “Then it was a couple of days’ work getting you back together again. I don’t remember anything about my own death,” the Demon went on self-absorbedly. “Just that I was planning it, and according to the papers I succeeded. I don’t remember anything before I woke up behind my school bike shed, where I’d crawled out of the ground…” he trailed off. “Anyway,” he said, “maybe I’m better off not remembering.”

  “I should say so,” to this at least Canon felt he could agree.

  “Guess you guys take a lot of killing,” Troy said in grudging admiration.

  “Oh yes,” Canon smiled. “Imago, at least. The lesser examples of our kind are almost as frail as humans. I happen to know from experience that a six-hundred-year-old Imago must spend many days in the fire, and his ashes scattered in the sun … but generally, once we are sufficiently damaged, there is no recovery. Or it takes decades. I’m not sure what Dell did to me, but I surely would have perished, and I would not have regenerated, had you not come.”

  “So,” Troy said, gesturing around at the wrecked apartment. “You’ve made an appearance at your old place, put the police off the scent, and folded your laundry. What now?”

  Canon paused. It was a good question. He wasn’t sure where he was going to go next, and that was an unfamiliar feeling. When Troy had dropped him at his apartment door that evening – not fifteen minutes earlier – he’d felt certain his next step was going to be packing his things and returning to Paris. Once there, he’d had a vague notion of regrouping and finding some way of recovering Laetitia. Whenever he thought back to the look on the Angel’s face, however, he realised how futile such a plan was. If this Barry Dell decided to follow him from Sydney to Paris, or Africa, or the moon, there was nothing Canon could do to stop him. Troy Haussman had made that much clear while he was healing him. Anything he chose to do was largely dependent upon the goodwill of the Demon.

  “I was planning on getting changed,” he said, gesturing at the suit. “Not that I don’t appreciate the lengths you went to finding this attire for me–”

  Troy waved a hand. “It was my dad’s,” he said, and leered. “He wasn’t using it anymore.”

  This was the fourth or fifth time Haussman had alluded to his father and either his father’s mistress or Troy’s own stepmother, and the fact that they were dead. Canon was fairly sure the Demon had killed them, but Troy was clearly unsure whether he wanted to tell the story himself, or wanted the Vampire to ask him about it. For now, he had decided to let these tantalising hints pass ‘unnoticed’.

  “I’m fortunate he was about my size,” Canon said diplomatically, and sat down on the edge of the bed. The shirt and trousers felt like they were going to burst at some seams, and bunched disgracefully at other points. He might as well have been wearing a poncho. He looked across at Haussman with polite interest. “You’ve told me about this Angel, Barry Dell, and the power he has,” he said. “But this is the only place I have ever encountered one.”

  “You’ve probably been lucky,” Haussman said. “He’s not the only one out there. And he’s definitely the weakest of them.”

  Canon nodded, taking this in. “And you say he’s not likely to move from this city.”

  “Actually, this country,” Troy said, “probably. He’s based in Fremantle, way the Hell over on the other side of the continent. Or island. Or whatever this shithole is,” he scowled. “He came all this way just to kill you, then took your head back to Fremantle as a trophy.”

  “Hold on,” Canon said. “You retrieved my skull from Fremantle?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And then … healed me … and transported us back here to Sydney?”

  Troy shrugged, but was evidently bursting with self-satisfaction. “Yep.”

  “That’s twenty-four hundred miles,” Canon made no effort to mask the disbelief and wonderment in his voice. On the contrary, he let it shine through for the Demon’s benefit. “And you carried us here in the blink of an eye, or so it felt.”

  “Kinda,” Troy said, still puffed up and pleased. Canon didn’t actually begrudge him that. “You were sort of groggy and out of it over in Fremantle, because it was still daylight up above. We set out from there at about quarter to four in the afternoon, local time, and I dropped you at your apartment door at quarter to six here, just as the sun went down. Had to time it that way. Not much point fixing you up and then letting you burn all over again,” he smiled shyly, proud and expectant.

  “I should say not,” Canon murmured. “Amazing. So, with the two-hour time difference, it really was functionally instantaneous.”

  “Few seconds, maybe,” Troy replied. “Don’t really know.”

  “How far could you transport someone like that?” Canon asked.

  “Not sure,” Troy said, “I’m pretty new at this,” he frowned. “Like, right at the start, first thing, I tried to go to another star system–” he grinned as Canon’s eyebrows shot up. “Oh yeah, think big, right? I wanted to get as far away as I could, and I’ve been reading about how many human-habitable planets there must be in this galaxy alone,” his momentarily cheerful expression darkened. “But I apparently can’t go anywhere outside this solar system. Even through the shadows, I guess the distances are too great.”

  “Through the shadows,” Canon said, fascinated. “Is that what you call it?”

  “I guess. I never really talked about it before. I haven’t talked with anyone, except–” he bit this off, and looked at Canon narrowly. Canon pretended not to have noticed the slip. “I’m just figuring it out as I go along, so it seemed like a good description,” Troy went on, and tilted his head again. “What did it seem like to you?”

  “Like nothing,” Canon said, shaking his head. “I blinked, we were here.”

  “Probably for the best,” the Demon said. “The shadows aren’t a real healthy place for living things to go through. I mean, living things like humans. It’s a bit less dangerous to undead things like Vampires, and even less dangerous to Demons. I don’t know about Angels. Maybe they can’t use it – I mean, Barry Dell went flying all the way across the country, you know, through the air, which he probably wouldn’t have done if he could take the shortcut. And there’s the…” he stopped. “Other effects,” he finished lamely, “that hit Angels but not Demons. You don’t need to know. We’re more powerful. That’s all you need to know.”

  “And – forgive me, but the danger to me, for the … shortcut we took to get here?” Canon inquired. Do I need to know that? he wanted to ask, but restrained himself.

  “You should be alright for a few little jumps. You’re old and crusty,” Troy grinned. “For me, it’s no more dangerous than driving a car. You know, over time. Statistically. Anyway, the point is I still didn’t manage to get to another planet where I could just be left alone.”

  “But you can travel anywhere on this planet, practically instantaneously?” Canon asked. Haussman, quicksilver fast, was getting morose and sulky about his apparent failings again.

  “Anywhere in this solar system,” Troy grinned again, and stuck out his sneaker. “These shoes left the first human footprints on Mars. Well, Demon footprints, I guess.”

  “Incredible,” Canon marvelled, once again not having to fake the awe in his voice.

  “Incredibly cold,” Troy laughed. “And basically airless and boring. There was some, like, weird stuff out there, there was like one moon all the way out that I was told–” again, he stopped himself and looked annoyed. “But mostly it was just freeze-dried nothing. And I wasn’t – I tried a couple of other planets, but Venus was … bad. And the rest were really hard to find. It’s big and empty out there, and the shadows are even bigger. Like, so big it doesn’t even mean anything, it’s just a word.”

  Canon thought about what the Demon had said. He found it difficult to conceptualise the
shadows through which they’d travelled, but he imagined it was something like the hyperspace they talked about in moving pictures and television. Something like that, anway. Faster than light speed, perhaps, although he was reasonably certain light could cross Australia in a few seconds. It wasn’t as if he had a lot of research to hang his thoughts on.

  “From the way you talk about it,” he said carefully, “it’s almost as if there’s something in there. Something dangerous? Worse for humans, but bad for the likes of me, and not particularly good for the likes of you either – although you’re safer than lesser beings.”

  “I don’t know that I’d call it something,” Troy replied. “There’s not enough of anything in there to make something. But that’s sort of the problem, it’s the nothing that’ll get you,” he laughed at his own wit and wisdom once again.

  “The old line about the abyss gazing into you was never so true, eh?” Canon remarked lightly, and looked away as though distracted by something when Troy scowled yet again, clearly caught out in ignorance and angered by it.

  “Yeah,” Troy said, uncertain and surly.

  Canon found himself wondering if Nietzsche’s famous aphorism was related to Demonic hyperspace, somehow. Maybe he’d been there. If anyone had…

  He who fights with monsters, Canon thought, and suppressed a shiver.

  “So here’s what puzzles me,” he said, to take both of their minds off the abyss. “You hail from America. I can take Australia or leave it. Why waste effort and time on this? Why continue to poke at the Angel, if he will not leave this country?” he spread his hands. “Dell thinks I’m dead … unless he knows you can restore me from the skull.”