The Brothers Cabal

by Jonathan L. Howard

  With a wet sucking sound, a second creature appeared from the void, rimed with extra-dimensional menace, and then a third.

  Maleficarus pointed at the attackers below and then, as the entities went down to do his bidding, stuck his hands in his pockets like a man watching an unexciting local football fixture on a damp afternoon.

  ‘My, my,’ said Johannes Cabal from behind him. ‘How insouciant you have become, Rufus. Once upon a time, you would have found yourself a suitable merlon, clambered upon it, and delivered a speech about how puissant your magic and how encompassing your ambition are.’ Cabal looked around. ‘You didn’t even bring an audience. This isn’t like you at all.’

  Rufus Maleficarus turned to face him, but said nothing.

  ‘And that summoning. The elegance of it. Where is all your posturing, your imprecations to arcane forces, your very … physical stylings that seem to imply that a successful casting will also clear your constipation? I’m disappointed, Rufus. Just a casual wave of your hand to summon an extra-dimensional entity. Where’s the drama in that?’

  Still, Maleficarus remained silent. Cabal walked closer, stopping some ten feet from what passed for his arch-enemy.

  ‘But, of course,’ he continued, ‘you’re not really Rufus Maleficarus at all, are you?’

  * * *

  ‘Hullo, everyone,’ said Horst Cabal.

  ‘Everyone’, in this context, consisted of the ministers of the Ministerium Tenebrae and Lady Misericorde. They turned to face him from the westerly windows as he pushed the double doors wide and entered. Alisha Bartos moved by him, a large semi-automatic pistol of German origin in her hand. She walked sideways, opening a cross fire between her own position and Horst’s, providing he’d been carrying a gun, too, which he wasn’t, which was a shame, but the thought was there.

  Burton Collingwood walked straight up to him, ignoring Alisha’s pistol. ‘Thank heavens you’ve come back to us, my boy!’ he said. ‘We need you desperately. I don’t know who these people out there are, but they’re cutting through our forces like wire through cheese!’

  ‘Well, Mr Collingwood,’ said Horst affably, ‘I would but for two significant little problems. One, I’m actually with those attackers, so technically I suppose that makes me your enemy.’ He shrugged and pulled a regretful face. ‘Sorry. The other is … Well, since I became what I’ve become, my senses are really very, very good. That’s important because, last time I met you, you had a very distinct scent combining cigar smoke, expensive soap, and cologne, and a hint in your sweat that you should cut down on your drinking a bit. Whereas now’—he looked very seriously at Collingwood—‘you smell like a butcher’s shop. Why do you suppose that is?’

  Collingwood did not reply, at least not verbally. Instead he thrust both hands, which had become very sharp and spiny in the blink of an eye, straight through Horst’s chest.

  Horst hadn’t felt pain commensurate with his mortal existence in a long time, but this experience filled in that vacancy nicely. He cried out in agony as the spines punched clean through him, emerging from the back of his jacket.

  ‘Shapechangers!’ shouted Alisha, opening fire on the others.

  ‘Yes, thank you,’ Horst managed, ‘the business with the changing shape was a clue.’ The spines flexed, turning into hooks at their tips to prevent him freeing himself. ‘Help?’

  The thing that was not Mr Burton Collingwood was just in the process of tearing Horst atwain when Alisha put a close group of three rounds in the back of its head. The shapechanger’s flesh, already achieving unseemly levels of motility as it transformed, was ill prepared to resist such an intrusion, and it sloughed its face onto Horst’s shirt.

  ‘Oh,’ said Horst unhappily. Then he slid from the creature’s spines as they softened in death to be dumped on the floor, subject to mixed emotions and great pain. He was hardly aware of the other false Ministerium councillors charging Alisha, dropping their forms as easily as an Essexian drops an H. Horst heard her gun bark rapidly, then she cried out. With an effort he looked up.

  They were killing her. One—he thought it might have been Vizconde de Osma until a moment before—had reached her despite being clipped by at least one bullet and had her speared clean through to the floor. The last one was heading towards Horst to finish what the Collingwood monster had begun.

  Horst tried to raise himself but staggered and fell back to his knees. He’d lost too much blood in the first attack. What little he could spare he was burning to accelerate his own mind, to stretch objective seconds into a subjective minute. He reached out for plans, tactics, bright ideas, stupid ideas, it’s-a-million-to-one-shot-but-it-might-just-work ideas, but all of them foundered on his injuries and weakness.

  Well, well, well, said a small voice in his head. So Mr Morality could do with a bit of help, could he?

  ‘Yes, actually,’ thought Horst.

  Not going to happen, mate, said the little voice, somewhat spitefully. I think I’ll just let this one play out.

  ‘That particular scenario finishes with me being torn to pieces,’ pointed out Horst.

  No skin off my nose.

  ‘Look, I think you’re forgetting something important here.’

  Oh?

  ‘You’re not actually a separate entity,’ thought Horst. ‘You’re just a convenient mental construction that I’ve created to allow me to compartmentalise the unacceptable urges of my vampirism.’

  There was a pause.

  I’m not sure what that means.

  ‘If I die, you die, which is pretty much all the skin off your nose. Besides, you’re missing another point which is of more immediate importance to you,’ added Horst, ever the people person, even when the people was him. ‘The shapechangers are human, despite appearances. If we’re going to survive, they have to die. And they are full of blood.’

  Another pause.

  Still not quite following.

  ‘They are full of blood, and they are all yours.’

  Oh … said the little voice. Well, why didn’t you say so?

  For the doppelgänger charging him, there was a moment when it blinked, and in that instant Horst was suddenly right in front of it. ‘Hello,’ said Horst, and smiled a very unfriendly smile.

  The doppelgänger never completed the thought that began, What long fangs this fellow …

  * * *

  Rufus Maleficarus smiled. ‘When did you guess?’

  Cabal winced. ‘Guess? I’m a scientist. I study the evidence. The fact that I killed you very thoroughly was my starting point.’

  ‘So? You’re a necromancer. Is it so hard to believe that I rose again?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, it is. As a zombie, I could have believed it. As a revenant, like your dear doubly departed father, this, too, I could believe. But look at you. You’re in full ruddy health. I’ve spent years trying to perfect such a process. Years.’ Cabal seemed momentarily distracted as he realised the weight of the word. He rallied his concentration and looked keenly at Maleficarus. ‘Frankly, Rufus—you don’t mind if I call you “Rufus”, do you? Just for the sake of convenience?—you’re not clever enough to produce such a miracle.’

  ‘Yet here I am, me and my magic,’ said Maleficarus. His smile had not flickered a millimetre. He nodded back at the parapet behind him, beyond which the sound of gunfire was clearly audible. An entomopter—the Striking Dragon—flashed by, guns blazing at the shining horrors Maleficarus had let slip into the mortal world.

  ‘And your magic,’ said Cabal with heavy emphasis. ‘That’s the thing, though. It’s not really magic for you, is it? It’s reflexive and natural. Always has been. No hocus pocus, incantations, and slaughtering goats for you, is there, Rufus?’

  The smile still did not waver. ‘My name is not Rufus.’

  ‘I know, but I have no idea what your real name is or if you even have one. I am talking to the animating spirit within the so-called Ereshkigal Working, am I not?’

  The smile flickered down half a candela before r
ecovering.

  ‘I see I am. I knew I killed Rufus properly. I know death, you see. You … he was very dead. There’s “dead” and then there’s “dead”, though, so it seems.’

  The Buzzbomb unleashed a rocket salvo at the alien entities. It missed, slamming into the tower wall thirty feet below. Fire and smoke arose behind Maleficarus.

  Cabal raised a hand. ‘Let me speculate. Something went … not exactly awry, but differently with the Ereshkigal Working when Rufus performed it? What was that, then? Did he make a mistake? I’m quite prepared to believe he made a mess of it.’

  ‘No,’ said the inexpressibly dangerous entity currently occupying the form of an obstreperous nincompoop. ‘You did.’

  Cabal blinked with surprise, and put his hand to his chest in an expression of injured innocence.

  * * *

  The silver rounds were doing no good. Nor were the holy ones, the explosive ones, the frangible ones, nor the armour-piercing ones. The shimmering beasts, if beasts they were and not expressions of a god’s thought or some of reality’s antibodies freed from the blood of creation, descended towards the ranks of the secret societies with not the smallest indication that having several pounds of lead thrown at them per second was making the slightest difference to their disposition or progress. It was noticeable that the bullets that went in came straight out of the other side. This was barely discernible for most of the shots fired at the entity, but the guns of the entomopters were larded with tracer rounds that scored white lines across the air, into the glistening, flashing creatures, and emerged unimpeded from the far side.

  Uncertainty and perhaps even fear was starting to grow in the ranks of the society agents; they were employing every trick that they had ever learned against a veritable bestiary of creatures not to be found in the more commonplace natural history museums, but what were they to do against creatures that impolitely declined to be sufficiently substantial enough to hurt?

  The one thing that mitigated against their invulnerability was that at least they had not attacked anyone, although the business with being visually fascinating to the point of compulsion was neither pleasant nor unthreatening. It was even impossible to raise hands to block out the sight, though the spectators’ arms were not paralysed. It was all very disconcerting and rather disagreeable, but while there was a threat in the air—very literally—nothing actually dangerous about the creatures had yet materialised. After all, no one had died yet.

  Then the central tentacle of the leading creature seemed to find one of the Templars in the front rank of interest. The lights along the length of the tentacle pulsed and throbbed up into the floating body above as if inhaling. The Templar made an involuntary step forward, started to cry out, and then died suddenly as his eyes, optic nerves, and the parts of the brain to which they were connected (specifically the lateral geniculate body, the superior colliculus, and—that old favourite—the suprachiasmatic nucleus) burst into fierce, brilliant flames that mirrored the intensity of the creatures’ light. He fell without a further sound, his eyes guttering in their sockets like falling firework rockets. The onlookers who saw his fate in their peripheral vision redoubled their efforts to look away, or even to simply blink their tearing eyes, but they could not.

  And, all the time, the things came on, implacable and scintillant.

  Miss Virginia Montgomery was certainly finding it hard to look away from the creatures, but at least she had a mechanism at hand to force her to. With a shove of her entomopter’s control yoke, she made the aircraft turn away. She found it impossible to prevent her head scanning sideways to keep the monsters in view, but then the edge of the cockpit intervened and both her line of sight and the spell were broken.

  She breathed a sigh of relief and fought down the fear the last few moments had placed in her. She’d heard all about the stories of snakes hypnotising their prey, but knew them to be an exaggeration. This, on the other hand, was the real thing. The victim was not immobilised, true, but getting away became a great deal more difficult when you couldn’t look to find your escape route. She was irked by this ability, but not unduly affrighted by it; she, after all, had not seen the fate of the Templar with the flammable eyes.

  It is perhaps just as well that she did not know that these creatures were incendiary cousins of the Medusa, for that might have worried her enough to fog her thinking, and it was her clear mind that was responsible for subsequent events.

  * * *

  As the world teetered on the edge of apocalypse, Johannes Cabal was having a snit.

  ‘Me? My fault? I think not. I had nothing to do with your … Rufus’s failings, multitudinous as they are. How do you propose that all this is my fault?’ He drew the Webley, perhaps rather belatedly, from its place at his hip, but did not raise it against Maleficarus. Rather, he let it dangle at his side, part threat, part convenience. ‘I thought I’d killed you—twice—and came here to finish the job. Here, to Mirkarvia.’ He said the name as if coughing up smoke from a burning skunk. ‘But, yes, I now see that I succeeded the second time. Whatever you are, you are not Rufus Maleficarus. There may be a few shreds of his glittering personality left, you can still probably tell the difference between a soupspoon and a fish knife, assuming he could, but that startling ego married to a deep and frankly impressive stupidity … I don’t see much evidence of that anymore. You’ve taken ownership of the rambling manse that once called itself “Rufus Maleficarus”, and you haven’t redirected his post.’

  ‘You know me.’

  ‘Yes, I know you. All too well. So, what’s all this about?’

  Maleficarus said nothing for long seconds, as if considering. Then: ‘I have come to the Earth of men three times. Twice my will was thwarted in war and blood. Desperate were my enemies. With fire they burned my armies. With fear they denied me my reinforcements. I fell back into chaos to wait. Once. Twice.’

  Cabal was glad of the weight of the pistol in his hand, even though he doubted it would be of much use. ‘Rufus Maleficarus was the third time.’

  ‘Rufus Maleficarus was the third time,’ agreed Rufus Maleficarus in form if not in spirit, ‘but I was denied my due that time by cunning and guile. I lost my armies, but he lived. That was … novel to me—the summoner had always been destroyed before. He lived, and through him I could still taste the world. The soul of Rufus Maleficarus was an improperly sealed portal. I bent my energies to ensuring that it never entirely closed.’

  ‘Not even when I shot him? Not even when he died?’

  ‘I was close. So close. But his limbs would not stir for me. His eyes would not open.’

  ‘And then … the Ministerium?’ Cabal took the silence for affirmation. ‘They dug Rufus up, carried out some sort of half-witted, half-arsed ritual, no doubt, and were quite giddy with glee when you resurrected perfectly, the depredations of the grave worms and several large-calibre bullet holes—my own small contributions’—and here he waved his revolver demonstratively—‘remarkably repaired, rejuvenated, and just as wonderful a human being as the day I shot you.’

  Rufus Maleficarus continued smiling. Even when he spoke, his lips didn’t move. Then again, his voice didn’t sound entirely like his own. ‘The Ministerium were most helpful.’

  ‘I didn’t think they could go any lower in my estimation, but that was before they kicked open the door you’d got your foot in.’ He regarded Maleficarus as one might a man who may just be a great intellect, but who is far more likely simply to be the village idiot. ‘That’s a metaphor.’

  ‘I am familiar with meta—’

  ‘They kicked open that door and laid out a welcome to a banquet of humanity.’

  ‘You speak without meaning.’

  ‘Do I? Then perhaps you will understand this—you have invaded my world three times before and failed three times. You should brace yourself for further disappointment.’

  The smile of Rufus Maleficarus was an unnerving thing to behold. For long minutes it had held without a twitch or a waver,
not even while he was speaking, an unpleasant detail in itself. He did not speak immediately, but looked down from the parapet. ‘Your allies will die soon. Then you will die. I shall possess your corpses. This time I will not be thwarted.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Cabal, ‘that’s not true. You will be thwarted. Now, in fact.’

  For the first time, the smile altered. It grew stronger, creasing itself into a rictus. ‘Your guns cannot harm me.’

  ‘Guns?’ Cabal looked at the pistol as if he’d forgotten about it. ‘Oh, guns. Well, yes, they can blow holes through you, but that isn’t what you’re talking about, is it? You mean you are an incorporeal entity that is simply riding around in poor old Rufus, and I can damage his body, but not you? Quite. You’re perfectly correct. I cannot hurt you. Not physically.’ Cabal crossed his arms, the pistol pointing off at a jaunty angle. ‘You must feel remarkably secure in your lack of corporeality. All the time you’ve existed, which is millennia to my certain knowledge and surely far beyond, and you’ve never felt pain. Just … frustration. Of course, that’s a sort of pain in itself, isn’t it?’