The Brothers Cabal

by Jonathan L. Howard

  That it didn’t reach her was surprising to them both, neither having allowed for the possibility of a vampire—moving at inhuman speed—intercepting the wolf in midair and the two of them crashing to the carriage roof in a tangle of fur, fangs, limbs, and aggression. The sudden change in matters caused Boom to freeze for a moment, but only a moment. Then she busied herself reloading, never taking her eyes off the fight.

  It had immediately become apparent to Horst that the fundamental difference between werewolves and werebadgers were that the former were so much more bitey. Where the badger had led with his heavy claws (although he might have got around to biting later if he had lived that long; after all, new werebadgers have to come from somewhere), the wolf’s tactics were all based around biting, grappling and biting, slashing and biting, and biting as an overture to more biting. Horst wasn’t having any of that, however; he had no idea if it was possible for a vampire to contract lycanthropism, but—diverting as the concept was—he had no intention of allowing werewolf saliva into his veins to find out. Besides, he’d already drunk werebadger blood that night, so, if anything, he’d end up striped, fanged, and with claws very useful for grubbing up worms and insects. He could hardly wait. Still, what if it were possible to be infected by more than one kind of lycanthropy? By the light of a full moon, he would turn into a vampiric weremenagerie, and that would just be confusing.

  Thus, he dodged and blocked the snapping jaws while ignoring the claws slashing his sadly abused clothing. He could always heal the wounds after all, and his clothes were already in such a state that a rag and bone merchant would turn his nose up at them.

  He was also eager to avoid falling from the train, a fate that the roof’s camber, the peripatetic nature of the fight, and the growing rocking motion as the train gathered speed were all starting to make a concern. The wolf was on him with its claws at his throat when, in an effort to re-centre the confrontation, he raised his hands between its arms and forced them apart, breaking its grip before punching it hard. As it reared back, momentarily stunned, he backhanded it, sending it stumbling backwards to fall supine along the raised centre ridge of the roof. Horst was on his feet in rather less than a second and positioning himself for the kill when he hesitated. The werewolf was possessed of dugs.

  It says something about Horst that the hesitation was provoked by two considerations. Firstly, that while this was certainly a ravening monster from the realms of phantasmagoria, it was a lady monster from the realms of phantasmagoria, and he had been raised to find it hard even to manage impoliteness to ladies, never mind killing them in hand-to-hand combat. Also, it must be admitted, he was wondering how two managed to manifest as six during the transformation and what it must look like as they shifted from chest to midriff, and back again when wolf-time was over. Alas, it was this second thought that occupied much of his concentration at the critical—indeed, fatal—moment, although there are probably worse things to be thinking while one is gutted by a werewolf.

  That it was not his last thought was entirely out of his hands. As the werewolf rolled to its hind feet and crouched to leap at the vampire, distracted terribly by inappropriate musings, a well-placed bullet entered its skull from behind, neatly between its laidback ears, the strange charm that usually protected the werefolk from such mundane deaths failing to protect it at all.

  Horst looked forward, slightly stunned and caught in a mist of werewolf fluids. Boom was crouching by the hatch up through which had appeared the upper body of Alisha, her pistol still levelled in a two-handed grip, stabilised by laying her upper arms on the hatch’s frame. She raised the gun while reaching into her jacket with her off hand, and brought it out again with a few metallic objects rolling in her palm. ‘Found some more silver bullets in my other pocket,’ she called. ‘I’d forgotten all about them.’

  Horst looked down at the werewolf’s body. It … she was already beginning to transform back into a human. Standing over the carcass, the miracle of wandering breasts no longer seemed so fascinating to Horst. He knelt down and rolled the body off the roof while she was still monstrous, inhuman, and easier for him to deal with on the balance sheet of his conscience.

  ‘There may be others,’ he shouted, distracted by an inner voice that was just pointing out that it was the wolfwoman or him who had to die, so obviously better it was the woman. If he would just put all these weak emotions in a box and burn them on a bonfire of ambitions now made possible by his elevated status, he would find things so much simpler and less painful. He ran aft to see if there were, indeed, others attackers to be dealt with. The precipitate decision surely had nothing to do with covering his confusion, oh no.

  There was sporadic fire from the rear car as the train pulled away from its pursuers. The shooting had settled down into a game of ‘Knock Down the Werewhatever’ after it had become apparent that the creatures were thoroughly resistant to lead. The vanguard of the pursuers were of the more fleet-of-foot varieties—wolves, mainly, along with a couple of great cats—and both they and the train’s defenders had discovered that things went badly for them if they were knocked off their feet by a shot. While the bullet itself was a small inconvenience, the great werebull—a magnificent minotaur possessed of vast slabs of muscle and little brain—that was following up the rear would likely run over them. The lycanthropes’ resistance to harm seemed very specific; bullets were nothing, but more immediate physical damage such as that caused by knives and the hooves of a clumsy werecow could cause great injury. Those knocked over by a flying bullet, therefore, prioritised getting out of the way rather than regaining their feet. That the minotaur was relatively slow, despite his enraged and protracted charge in pursuit of the train, meant that while he stood no chance of catching them, he was inadvertently aiding the cause of the fugitives. Finally, however, even he realised that if you’re running after something and yet it continues to grow smaller, then the chances are it’s getting away from you. He slowed to a halt, clouds of vapour rushing from his muzzle in gouts, and bellowed his frustration at the diminishing train.

  Horst waved at him, which didn’t help.

  * * *

  Finally, the time for formal introductions had arrived. The venue was a rarely used spur line leading up to a worked-out tin mine in a festering of small, heavily wooded hills between which the main line snaked. The practised manner in which switches were thrown, the metal stop sign mounted in the middle of the track was lifted and replaced after the train had moved by, and then all traces of its passage erased indicated that this was a bolthole they had had cause to retire to on several occasions.

  In the penultimate carriage of the train, Ginny the Boss was holding court; whether it was a court of the royal variety or the judicial sort was open to interpretation. She sat behind a desk at one end of a large compartment that seemed to double as an office and a common room, regarding them with a jaundiced and suspicious eye, while her four colleagues sat or stood around her. Before them were Horst, Alisha, the major, and the professor. All were subdued; outside just by the tree line was a fresh grave. Richard had not survived his injuries, dying quietly while the fight had raged outside. The burial was preceded by a grim little piece of post-mortem surgery to ‘deny’ him to the enemy, the professor having no more of his strange chemical mixture left to affect a convenient cremation.

  Ginny regarded them one at a time, taking her time as her gaze swept along the line of her new passengers. Finally, she said, ‘That’s not the kind of way I like to be woken.’

  ‘Apologies, madam,’ said the major, bravely taking the onerous task of communicating with these unnatural women. ‘The situation was not of our choosing.’

  ‘Yeah. I figured that. So, since you’ve cost me so much time and trouble, maybe you could explain the zombies, the werethings, and’—she pointed at Horst—‘him.’

  The major looked at Horst uncertainly. ‘While I can assay an attempt to explain all else, ma’am, to be frank I’d have a few problems explaining Herr Cabal
myself.’ He turned back to Ginny. ‘I am Major Haskins, late of the Guards…’

  Ginny held up a hand. ‘What guards? Train guards? The Coldstream Guards?’

  ‘The Grenadiers, madam!’ said Haskins, plainly more affronted by the second suggestion than the first. ‘As I was saying, late of the Guards. These days, however, I fight in a different sort of war. I should introduce my colleagues. This is Professor Stone’—the professor bowed, then made subsidiary side-bows to the other women of the circus—‘an antiquary and anthropologist.’

  ‘Amateur anthropologist,’ the professor quickly interpolated.

  ‘He’s too modest to say so, but he’s quite the polymath. And this is Miss Alisha Bartos.’ Alisha showed no inclination to bow or, heaven forbid, curtsey. Instead she simply nodded. ‘She’s…’ The major foundered, at a loss to explain succinctly what she was. ‘She’s … well.’

  Ginny looked at her. ‘What do you call yourself?’

  Alisha considered for a few seconds; it appeared summing up her career briefly was not something she’d had to do before. Certainly, her curriculum vitae seemed to be of an involved sort, given her evident concentration.

  Then her brow cleared and she smiled very slightly. ‘I’m a spy.’

  Ginny leaned back, her old round-backed office chair creaking. ‘Poor kind of spy who admits to it.’

  Alisha shrugged slightly. ‘An ex-spy.’

  ‘Who for?’

  ‘Prussian Intelligence.’ There was an amused snort from Mink at that, earning her a cold scowl from Alisha. ‘Which is not a contradiction in terms.’

  Ginny shook her head slightly and looked at their faces one by one. ‘So. We have us a soldier, an academic, and an ex-spy.’ Amid more creaking she leaned forward and rested an elbow on her desk and her chin in her palm as she looked at Horst standing there in the wreck of his outfit. ‘I can barely wait to hear what you are.’

  ‘Oh, I’m a vampire,’ said Horst. ‘Speaking of which, do you think we might rattle on a bit more quickly with this? The sun will be up soon, and we don’t really get on very well.’

  Chapter 9

  IN WHICH ACQUAINTANCES ARE MADE AND MEASURES TAKEN

  Horst slept that day in an arms locker, which was a novel experience. As they were currently in dangerous country dense with bandits, outlaws, and—as it turned out—zombies, shapechangers, and sundry forces of darkness, the weapons were not to be found in there at the moment. This left them with a welded steel safe box, perhaps a yard square, guarding some cleaning kits, empty packages, and the petty cash. These were spirited out, and Horst invited somewhat tersely to take up residence. He was disappointed but not surprised to hear the box’s heavy padlock put into place and clicked shut once he was uncomfortably curled up within. Another confined space, another padlock; how history repeated itself.

  Although he could not see it, he was aware of the sun rising outside and of its purifying rays driving away all evil from the hemisphere, with the exception of bankers. A few minutes later, a great weariness settled upon him and he fell rapidly into torpor. There was little air within the box, but that didn’t matter; he wouldn’t be using any of it.

  * * *

  Some events occurred during the day, as events are wont to do, but Horst was unaware of these and all else.

  The sun moved on. It was a pleasant enough sort of day for those who were not in deadly danger, but the passengers of the train regarded the slow arc of the sun as a slowly creeping indicator of growing menace. The night would shoo away the bankers, but all other evils would be unleashed.

  * * *

  Horst awoke in the reverse of how he slept. As the sun slipped beneath the unseen western horizon, animation returned to him, and he stirred in an unnatural sleep. Through the long minutes of dusk, he slept as he had once slept when his blood was warmer and his hours diurnal until as the last glimmer passed from the sky, his eyes opened.

  He was still in a box, and the blasted thing was still locked.

  After some minutes of gentle pounding on the box’s side with the occasional polite cry of, ‘Hello! Excuse me, hello?’ he heard approaching footsteps. The lock rattled in its hasp, and the lid was flung up. He uncurled himself, cramp fortunately being a mortal failing, and raised his head slowly to look out.

  One of the circus women, presumably whoever had just released him, was returning to a firing line centred around Ginny. They looked at him from above gun barrels and their intent to shoot him if necessary was perfectly evident. Horst found something to lament in that this wasn’t even the worst wake-up call he’d ever experienced.

  ‘Good evening, ladies,’ he said quietly, so as not to provoke. The carriage was swaying slightly; he wondered how long they had been under way. ‘Two things worth considering. Firstly, you could have destroyed me easily during the day. But you didn’t. Many thanks for that. Secondly, you must appreciate that your guns are next to useless against me. I could probably pop out of here and…’

  Hunger, said the nagging little voice that wasn’t him yet spoke with his voice. Kill them and feed.

  ‘Pop out of here and…’ Kill. ‘… defeat you.’ Knuckles whitened as trigger fingers grew taut. ‘But … I’m not going to do that.’ They continued to stare at him from behind their ridiculous, useless weapons. ‘Because’—he smiled, fighting the urge to let his fangs extend—‘I want us to be friends.’

  ‘He’s right,’ said Alisha. Horst hadn’t consciously noticed her; she’d been standing alongside the box the whole time. ‘The guns are a waste of time. Believe me, I know.’

  Horst nodded, hands on the edge of the box, head barely exposed. ‘She shot me.’

  ‘I shot him,’ Alisha confirmed. ‘Twice. I knew they wouldn’t kill him. I just needed to slow him down a little.’

  ‘Unnecessarily.’

  ‘I didn’t know that at the time,’ she said, with the tiniest hint of apology in her voice.

  Ginny sighed and returned her revolver to its hip holster. ‘Put ’em away, girls,’ she ordered. Hammers were thumbed down, safety catches engaged, barrels lowered, holsters filled. Ginny was obeyed without question, perhaps, but with evident reluctance. Even given the ineffectuality of firearms against a vampire, there would still have been some satisfaction in punching a few holes in him if things had become physically unfriendly. Ginny Montgomery sat on a crate and regarded both Horst and Alisha with the same air of mild hostility. ‘Waifs and strays I can deal with, but this is a new one on me. Monsters and monster hunters, and one of the hunters is a monster himself. This is just great,’ she said, although whether she really thought it was great was disputable.

  ‘Life’s strange, isn’t it?’ said Horst. He had decided that to take offence at the term ‘monster’ would be undiplomatic. In any case, it was true. ‘May I get out of the box, please? I feel like half of a ventriloquist act in here.’ Nobody said he couldn’t (although nobody said he could). As he climbed out, he asked, ‘So, anything interesting happen while I was sleeping?’

  ‘Miss Montgomery here,’ said Alisha, nodding at Ginny, ‘has agreed to take us to the next town. Then we’re on our own again.’

  ‘Town is putting it strongly,’ said Mink. When Alisha looked questioningly at her, she expanded with, ‘It’s a farming centre. Calls itself a town, but really it’s just a place for the farmers to come in to buy supplies. Maybe a couple of hundred people there.’

  This was not the sort of news Alisha was hoping for. ‘There’ll be a telegraph office, though? Other trains coming through?’

  Mink shrugged.

  Alisha raised her hands in frustration, her tension apparent. ‘You’ve seen what’s going on around here,’ she remonstrated. ‘They know their security’s compromised, they’re moving ahead more rapidly already. Unless we stop them, this whole region will become a living nightmare.’ She examined her words and shook her head with a slight disbelieving smile. ‘That’s not even a fanciful way of describing it. That is exactly what it will be like.�
�

  ‘Tell it to the Marines,’ said Miss Virginia ‘Ginny’ Montgomery wearily. Nobody seemed to have had much sleep. ‘It’s not like we’re kicking you off the train at Hicksberg or whatever it’s called when we get there. We’re doing three days of shows there, maybe some agricultural work if we can find it.’

  Agricultural work? mouthed Horst, but nobody minded him.

  ‘It’s our job. We don’t fight bogey men ’less somebody brings ’em to our door,’ Miss Montgomery said pointedly. ‘There are authorities, aren’t there? Tell them. It’s their country after all. Their country, their problem.’

  Alisha took a step forward, her anger growing. ‘The authorities? For this place? Don’t you understand? They’re in the Ministerium’s pocket. We’d have to go to the neighbouring states. By the time we’ve convinced them of the threat…’

  ‘If you ever do,’ said Horst quietly.

  Alisha shot him a glance. ‘We can be very persuasive. We have connections you know nothing about. You think private citizens can just lay hands on field mortars and shells if they get a sudden urge to siege a castle? Do you?’ She turned her attention back to Miss Montgomery. ‘By the time we can convince them and they mobilise, it will be far, far too late.’

  ‘What were you planning on doing by yourself, then? There’s the four of you.’ Miss Montgomery rose from her crate and walked over to where Alisha stood, almost palpably fuming with angry frustration. ‘Look, darlin’, I have no idea if this is all you say it is. I’ll be honest with you—this whole place is in such a state of disarray that I don’t know if the citizens will even notice if they’re being ruled by vampires and goblins and the Lord only knows what. The bottom line of the account reads that there’s not a thing you can do by yourself. No matter what, your best chance is to persuade the neighbours to get involved. Yes, yes, I heard you. That’ll be too late to nip this thing in the bud. Maybe so, but it’s the only game in town. The place we’re going to, we organised where we’re going to be putting on the show by wire, so you can rest assured they’ve got a telegraph office there. Get your message out. That’s all you can do, so you better get comfortable with the idea.’