The Brothers Cabal

by Jonathan L. Howard

  ‘So,’ he said. ‘Ladies. Gentlemen. The immediate menace is defeated.’

  ‘The immediate menace?’ Atropos Straka regarded him suspiciously. ‘What do you mean?’

  Cabal shrugged as if discussing an unexpectedly heavy plumbing bill. ‘I’ve done as you asked. The Ministerium is in retreat and in heavy disarray. Rufus Maleficarus is…’ He glanced sideways at the hatbox he had requisitioned from the boudoir of Lady Misericorde. ‘Dealt with. The problem has not been permanently resolved, however. Only three senior members of the Ministerium are dead; the rest of the organisation remains extant. And, most important, their sponsor, Orfilia Ninuka, also known as the Red Queen, also known as’—he paused for effect—‘Lady Misericorde the Necromantrix…’

  There were no gasps, but a few jaws dropped, which was good enough.

  ‘… remains alive and at large. She is the greatest threat both to the world in general and specifically to each of your groups. I know from recent experience that she takes her revenge very seriously. You have all now opposed her and thereby aroused her opprobrium. You should guard yourselves carefully.’

  ‘And what about us?’ Miss Virginia Montgomery stepped forward, damply. She appeared have taken a bath while clothed. ‘We lost Daisy, two ’mopters, and now you’re telling us we have a witch with a grudge on our tails, too?’

  Cabal winced. ‘Necromancers are not witches…’ he began.

  ‘You lost another entomopter?’ interrupted Horst. ‘Which one was it?’

  ‘Mine,’ she said. ‘The Spirit of ’76 had her last hurrah. It was a good one, though.’

  ‘But you’re all right?’ said Horst, looking at her from head to foot searching for injuries.

  ‘I’m fine. My bird’s a wreck, though.’

  ‘Well, perhaps this will help,’ said Horst, and produced a box from his pocket.

  Miss Virginia accepted it, a little suspiciously. She opened it to reveal a mass of small items of jewellery: earrings, brooches, rings, pendants. This solicited a gasp where the revelation that Lady Misericorde and Lady Ninuka were one and the same person had not, slightly to Cabal’s irritation.

  ‘I found them in Misericorde’s … Ninuka’s dressing table,’ he said. ‘They may be costume jewellery for all I know.’

  ‘Lady Ninuka,’ said Cabal pointedly, ‘would sooner wear an inexpertly tattooed mandrill’s arse on her person as costume jewellery. Those are real, I’m sure of it.’

  ‘Will that be enough to buy you a new entomopter?’ asked Horst.

  ‘Oh, yeah.’ Miss Virginia Montgomery closed the box and put it away. She smiled lopsidedly at Horst and nodded. ‘Oh, yeah.’

  ‘As for her revenge, you should remain alert, but I suspect she regards you as hirelings, and thereby beneath her attention,’ said Cabal. He considered his words. ‘I trust you take no offense at being referred to as “hirelings”?’

  ‘If it keeps us out of that lunatic bitch’s attention, we are entirely fine with it.’

  ‘Alors,’ said Henri Palomer, Yellow Inquisitor. ‘Madame shows grace under pressure. Speaking of which, there will certainly be a counterattack to reclaim the castle, mes amis. We should scour the place for intelligence, and—why not?—any valuables that can fund our further activities, and be quick about it.’

  ‘He’s right,’ said Atropos Straka. ‘We don’t have long.’ She gave orders to her group and, without further consultation, they moved off into the body of the building.

  Concerned that the Sisters of Medea might get all the good stuff, the other societies quickly followed, leaving the Brothers Cabal alone in the hall.

  ‘Should we just steal Alisha’s body now?’ asked Horst. ‘I’m a bit new to the whole body-snatching thing.’

  ‘No,’ said Cabal. ‘I’ll substitute a body in a winding sheet before dawn, if you’ll help. One of the shapechangers is about the right build. They can burn it with my blessing.’ He clapped Horst’s arm reassuringly. ‘Let them have their good-byes. Staying on the right side of secret societies is hard work at the best of times without provoking them. Besides, the chemicals I took from Ninuka’s laboratory will keep Miss Bartos’s body in a perfect state of preservation for a few weeks. I shall have plenty of time to prepare a longer-term solution without alienating our clandestine friends.’

  Unconsciously, his hand drifted to the pocket in which he had secreted the book Presbyter Johannes.

  ‘I have work to do,’ he said. He looked at Horst a little furtively. ‘We have work to do. I can save them, Horst. I can save them both. And I think…’ He looked at the floor. ‘I’m not sure. I don’t want to raise hopes.’

  ‘Raise away, brother,’ said Horst. ‘I could do with a new pastime. Is saving the world always this tiring?’

  ‘I once promised to try and reverse your condition.’ He tapped his pocket. ‘This may be the key to that.’

  Horst did not smile. ‘Perhaps,’ he said slowly, ‘I no longer wish to be just a man anymore. Perhaps I have grown used to my condition. Perhaps … I even enjoy my condition.’

  Now Cabal looked him in the eye. ‘Have you?’

  Have you? said a small voice in Horst’s mind.

  Horst laughed, and answered them both. ‘No!’ He slapped Cabal on the shoulder hard enough to make him stagger. ‘Come on, Johannes. You said it yourself; we have work to do. And the sun’s not going to stay down forever.’

  So, gathering up the few items they had looted from the apartments of Lady Ninuka, and the muttering hatbox, the Brothers Cabal left the confines of Harslaus Castle. There would be trials ahead, they knew. Danger, difficult decisions, horror, and despair awaited them, as they always had. But they had one another, the ingenuity and knowledge of Johannes, the personableness and supernatural powers of Horst, plus the purloined book that might be the key to all their hopes, plus a muttering hatbox to add to Johannes Cabal’s growing collection of talking boxes.

  Plus, Cabal inwardly admitted, he had swapped a very disappointing nemesis for one worthy of the title. One is often judged by the quality of one’s enemies, after all. He was still troubled that Ninuka had gone to such extents to drag him into play for no better reason than revenge, but was beginning to see that he might have misunderstood the method of that revenge. No matter how nice they were in life, vampires are rarely the most moral creatures in death. That was her revenge right there; to bring Cabal’s own brother back into the world as a monster. That was why she had gone to the trouble of recruiting Horst rather than one of their home-grown vampires. Of course. Cabal berated himself for ever thinking it might be anything more complicated than that.

  She had misjudged Horst sorely, though, and that was all for the good. It might be necessary to deal with Ninuka in the future, but he expected she would be too busy reestablishing her grip on power for the moment to cause him any trouble for at least a couple of years. With the secret societies now very aware of her, he doubted she would be given that time.

  All in all, things conceivably might have been better for a jobbing necromancer and his vampiric brother, but they could also have been a great deal worse, and that was grounds for optimism in itself.

  Thus, they walked from Harslaus Castle, and entered upon the unknown adventure that awaited them with the pleasurable sense that the unreachable had become the attainable, that the road had an end, and that end was only just out of sight.

  AUTHOR’S FURTHER AFTERWORD

  There. Not quite as ‘Happy ever after’ as if you’d paid me any attention and stopped when I told you to, but still nice enough. Now stop. On no account read the final epilogue. Just leave well enough alone. Shoo.

  JLH

  THE NASTY EPILOGUE

  Two thousand feet up, hidden in the scudding cloud, the aeroyacht Catullus held station above the action below. The castle had been taken and would be permitted to be left in the hands of the attackers for two hours only. Less, if they showed any sign of trying to burn the place down. Then the Katamenian bandits would counterattac
k, and the Dee Society et al would be suffered to beat a hasty retreat. After all, their mission was a success. Or so they thought.

  In the observation room, Lady Misericorde and Lady Ninuka and the Red Queen all sat together in the same person and watched the fires guttering on the site of battle. She had abandoned the castle immediately after the fight between Horst Cabal and the shapechangers had begun, made her way out by diverse hidden means, and rendezvoused with her faithful lickspittle Encausse, who had taken her to the waiting Catullus. Now she watched and she considered matters.

  Alsager was dead, which was to be expected, but the loss of almost all his lycanthropes was not. Still, such things happen in war. She would find some more from elsewhere. She had the reins of the Ministerium now and there were already agents en route to deal with any recalcitrant minor ministers. By tomorrow she’d have the interior decorators back into the castle, making good the ravages of battle. Using Maleficarus had been a calculated risk; there was always the chance that Cabal would fail and the Ereshkigal Working would be unleashed once more, probably finally and fatally for the world. Not that she cared. She no longer had any fear of death. Hadn’t she died once already?

  Does he have the book?

  She looked at the ebony urn by her side, the coat of arms of Marechal upon it. She knew it didn’t really speak. That would be absurd. No, she was insane. That made far more sense.

  ‘I gave him long enough to find it,’ she said distractedly.

  You’re a clever girl.

  ‘Thank you, Daddy.’

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  The book you have just read is, of course, all my work and nobody else had a damn thing to do with it. More lily-livered authors might feel constrained to thank their editors (Peter Joseph, and copyeditor Bethany Reis), their agents (Sam Copeland of Rogers, Coleridge & White in the UK and Melissa Chinchillo of Fletcher & Company in the US), and artists (Michael J. Windsor for the cover and Linda “Snugbat” Smith for the chapter heads).

  They might even feel some sort of necessity in my position to mention that I borrowed (with permission) the names “Mink Choi” and “Dea Boom” from real folk, because they are excellent names and I wanted to use them (I now return them, and apologies if they got scuffed at all. Thank you, Mink and Dea).

  But not me, obviously. This book is entirely a product of my own incandescent genius.

  Unless you didn’t like it, in which case it’s all their fault. Nothing to do with me. It was like that when I got here.

  JLH

  Also by Jonathan L. Howard

  THE JOHANNES CABAL NOVELS

  Johannes Cabal the Necromancer

  Johannes Cabal the Detective

  Johannes Cabal: The Fear Institute

  YOUNG ADULT NOVELS

  Katya’s World

  Katya’s War

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  JONATHAN L. HOWARD is a game designer, a scriptwriter, and a veteran of the computer-games industry since the early nineties, with titles such as the Broken Sword series to his credit. He is the author of Johannes Cabal the Necromancer, Johannes Cabal the Detective, and Johannes Cabal: The Fear Institute as well as the young adult novels Katya’s World and Katya’s War. He lives in the United Kingdom with his wife and daughter.

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS.

  An imprint of St. Martin’s Press.

  THE BROTHERS CABAL. Copyright © 2014 by Jonathan L. Howard. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  www.thomasdunnebooks.com

  www.stmartins.com

  Illustrations by Linda “Snugbat” Smith

  Cover illustration and design © Michael J. Windsor

  eBooks may be purchased for business or promotional use. For information on bulk purchases, please contact Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department by writing to MacmillanSpecialMarkets@macmillan.com.

  The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

  ISBN 978-1-250-03754-1 (hardcover)

  ISBN 978-1-250-03753-4 (e-book)

  e-ISBN 9781250037534

  First Edition: October 2014

  * For those unfamiliar with the Dreamlands, shame on you. My editor, however, informs me that shame is all very well, but uninformative, and might I actually explain what the Dreamlands are? They are, then, a realised world influenced but not necessarily created by dreams. They are ancient, inhabited by gods and their divine leavings, as well as those who travel there in their dreams or, rarely, in their own bodies. It is also home to zebras. The curious reader is directed to The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath by H. P. Lovecraft, or the previous novel in the saga of Cabal, Johannes Cabal: The Fear Institute. If the reader only has the time or inclination to read one of these, the author respectfully suggests the latter, both because it appertains directly to the current text, and also because Lovecraft is long dead and doesn’t need the royalties.

  * Johannes Cabal interrupted the narrative at this point. ‘What is this nonsense? Mother’s name is “Liese”.’ To this Horst said nothing, except to smile the smile of a freelance lounge lizard. Cabal grimaced, and muttered, ‘You are disgusting.’

  * ‘You’re aware that, by strict definition, a lycanthrope is specifically a werewolf, aren’t you?’ asked Johannes Cabal of his brother. Horst muttered something about the magnificent mutability of language, popular usages replacing dry old meanings, and anyway, ‘by strict definition,’ weren’t necromancers only supposed to be fortune-tellers? Johannes conceded the point, and Horst continued.

  * By necessity rather than any culinary desire. The story by which this occurred is too involved for a footnote such as this, but the uninformed reader is directed to the first novel dealing with the life and times of Johannes Cabal the necromancer. Indeed, if the reader finds themselves here without having read the previous tales, they are brave indeed, and should brace themselves for further incomprehension.

  * ‘Cumulonemesis,’ said Johannes Cabal. ‘It’s called cumulonemesis. There are a surprising number of supernatural weather conditions.’ This was no more than the truth, he himself having personally encountered the Bone Wind as well as an ill-starred meeting with the monstrous genius who created the flesh-dissolving, soul-devouring Red Snow.

  * At this point, Johannes Cabal interrupted the narrative to explain that the harvestman, known in North America as the ‘daddy longlegs’ (an obvious nonsense as ‘daddy longlegs’ is, of course, a colloquial name for the common crane fly), isn’t a spider at all, but of the order Opiliones, which, while arachnid, are not actually closely related to spiders. He spoke on this theme for several minutes. It was fascinating.

  * He lost them too easily for him to put much faith into holding on to a notebook indefinitely. Thus, he maintained a master list of useful information, ready to be copied into a new notebook as utility demanded. It took a few hours to accomplish—and he was considering the possibility of having them printed—resulting in a small black notebook, half filled in a tightly written shorthand of his own invention. The other half was to be used for notes he made as necessary during experiments, explorations, and larceny.

  * Here, Cabal was wrong. The actual demon who was summoned was one Ragtag Slyboots. The negotiations for Lady Misericorde’s boon had gone much along expected lines until the name ‘Johannes Cabal’ had come up as a potential enemy. Ragtag had peremptorily torn up the agreement they had just signed and told her that her soul was hers to enjoy for eternity, and that she might have the power she sought gratis, a freebie from the Pit. Thus, Cabal’s penchant for making enemies in low places came back to torment him. It was hardly the first time.

  * It bears noting that Johannes Cabal would never have referred to these colours thus, pointing out with agonising pedantry that infra-violet is
simply indigo or, more likely, blue, while ultra-red is better known as ‘orange’. This is why these stories are written in the third person.