We Will All Go Down Together

by We Will All Go Down Together (v5. 0) (epub)

  Downwind, Enzemblance spread her arms, claws unsheathing, and Carra—sensibly enough—stepped damn well back as a bespectacled young Native man (Sylvester Horse-Kicker, from the Institute) jumped to her side. A pure blast of sick fear unfurled in all directions, knocking them down as their fellows stumbled too, caught by the same shot: both some variety of Asian, though Jo could hardly tell which.

  The larger went down on one knee, gasping, ’til the smaller hauled him up again, conjuring a violet-tinged bubble to cover them and yelling in his ear—“Grab hold of one of them, doesn’t matter which, so the shield spreads! I can’t reach Carra from here, not in time—” Adding, as the giant Fae advanced on them, blocking the way: “And you can go to hell, chi-shien gweilo Tinkerbell! I’ll lay you out and shit in your mouth!”

  “Brave words, mage,” this hulking apparition replied, mildly enough. “Yet th’art nae puissant enow tae take me on, let alone my sister.”

  “Mage,” and Oriental . . . Jude Hark, then. Who only braced himself in the monster’s face, bubble pumping tighter, spitting: “Try me.”

  All this as Jo herself reeled, hit square in the chest, heart lurching under the strain of glamour made flesh: the terror-shout, the bean sidhe’s wail. Christ Jesus, but these things are strong, she thought.

  As I said, hen. Now let me in, gie me flesh wi’ my Black Man’s mark tae work through, and we’ll strike ’em down all three, together.

  Dav, then, in her other ear: Do not do it, Jo. Don’t trust her.

  Hush, I said!

  Yeah, and I heard you—I just don’t give a shit. See how that works?

  “You know, I think this whole conversation’s gotten off on kind of the wrong foot.”

  Both ghosts fell silent, along with everybody else, as Maccabee Roke strode out of the shadows midway between Carra and Enzemblance, both hands dug deep in his pockets.

  “Miss Devize,” he addressed Carra, bowing lightly. “Nice to make your acquaintance; long overdue, considering.” To Enzemblance, meanwhile, barely civil: “Aunt.”

  Enzemblance cocked her head, mantis-style. “Nephew,” she breathed. “How came you here, and so slyly? How is’t we shouldna know our ane when it approaches?”

  “Might be I’ve learned a trick or two since last time. Might be I know somebody knows tricks you don’t, even. Or, then again . . . might be you’re just getting old.” Then, raising a brow at the nearest of Enzemblance’s allies: “What do you think, coz?”

  “Dinnae involve me in yuir follies, Maccabee, I do pray ye.”

  “Oh yeah, I get it; don’t want to make Mom look bad. ’Cause she’s doing such a good job of that, all on her own.”

  The hulk rumbled with laughter. “Th’art well come here, as e’er, Miliner’s lad,” he said. “Yet ’tis no’ the best plan tae interefere in Enzemblance’s pleasures.”

  “Probably not. But this is family business, right? And I’m family.” Indicating Carra, now: “Her, too.”

  Enzemblance shrugged. “We’ve family for some miles, yet that’s saved nane, did they dare tae stand against us. Nae more than ’twill now save ye, nor her, either.”

  “Holy shit, lady,” Judy Kiss observed, sidling up next to Roke, so soft and quick that none of them—even Jo herself—saw her coming. “That is some convoluted grammar right there, even by Jacobean standards.”

  “And who might ye be?” Enzemblance demanded, drawing herself up. “Saracen, can ye name this creature?”

  “His leman, mother. I know not what she’s called.”

  “Judeta Kiss, that’s what she’s—I’m—‘called,’” Judy snapped. “His back-up.”

  “You?” Enzemblance scoffed. “Y’are a small thing indeed, t’ stand between me and my nephew’s downfall.”

  Judy smiled, that same ill smirk, eyes visibly lightening. “Oh yes?” she asked. And reached up, without warning, straight through Enzemblance’s shell of glamour to catch her by the hair, same as any other playground bully—just wound a good long hank of it ’round her small fist and yanked until the monster-lady fell forward, like a cut tree.

  “How dare—?” Enzemblance began, predictably enough. To which Judy replied: “How? Like this, mostly.”

  —then drew back her other hand and slapped her, right across the face. The impact rocked everybody within range, Saracen in particular, who gawped, jaw falling slack. While Mac Roke grinned, happily.

  “She’s pretty amazing, huh?” he asked of no one.

  “I’ll tear ye in twain, ye scut,” Enzemblance hissed, borne down and wilting beneath a flood of negative energy—a swarming, soot-black miasma, exhaled from Judy’s very pores, growing stronger the more resistance it encountered. Saracen made a feint towards her, but a spray of it broke over him like spindrift, and he fell back, gagging, into his uncle’s massive arms.

  “No you won’t,” Roke told her.

  “Will I not?” Enzemblance growled, ripping at the ground.

  “Nope. She’s far beyond the likes of you and me, Auntie—though I might have some immunity, given who I used to work for. Judy, she’s been turned inside out and put back together by the best Hell itself has to offer. We’re a walk in the park, after that.”

  “You make it sound so . . . sexy,” Judy managed between clenched teeth, as she punched Enzemblance back down again, both hands gloved in spiritual sickness. Her eyes were all yellow now, bright to blazing.

  “Angels,” said Minion, suddenly, voice thick with a deep, sullen fear. “I know that taste. That pain.”

  “Yeah, that’s right.” Judy gave a half-laugh. “Angels eat pain, and I’m—”

  Enzemblance got her feet under her suddenly, rearing up, but Judy only went with the movement, pulling them over; a swirl of viscid blackness kicked up, engulfing them both. Before anyone quite saw how, the Fae woman was face-down in the dirt, Judy atop her with thighs clamped tight round her midsection and one hand still dug deep in her hair, using it for reins.

  “—I’m what’s left when they shit it back out. Bitch,” she finished, only slightly breathless.

  At this, Saracen—provoked beyond endurance—broke free, lunging to his mother’s aid; Mac met him halfway, slashing out with the relic, which he’d hidden up one sleeve. Though Saracen almost managed to dodge, the spike’s tip raked one arm, and he reeled back, shrieking. A bubble of violet light snapped shut on him, freezing him in place, blurry yet static; Jude Hark stood with hands clenched on empty air, fingers trembling, as Saracen pounded the inside of the bubble, savagely.

  Minion bellowed and struck the ground with both fists. The shockwave knocked Fae and mortal alike flying, all but himself and Jo, still safely distant. Jude’s purple force-shell winked out; the black power shrouding Judy burst like a mucus-filled water balloon, splashing tarry ectoplasmic slime everywhere. Bounced back from Enzemblance, Roke caught her, but almost dropped the damn nail doing it—their weapon of last resort, with everything else defused.

  Aw Christ, they’ll bloody massacre them. . . .

  “Enough.”

  Using Horse-Kicker’s arm as leverage, Carra Devize pulled herself up to see as the others turned likewise, stone doors grinding open once more, allowing three people to emerge: a dark-haired woman with a worn but still lovely face, in threadbare T-shirt and jeans, plus a root-woven torc; a skinny, pallid child, burlap-wrapped and barefoot; and a grey-haired man—Ganconer Sidderstane, probably, seeing how they steered him forward through nudges and tugs—supported between them, whose red-rimmed eyes, at first glance brown, were actually blank, pupilless, as though carved from wood.

  Twa een o’ tree.

  Kim scrambled to his feet, swaying slightly. “Galit?” he called, voice cracking with hope.

  For a moment, Galit Michaels blinked at him, but that soon passed; her mouth fell open, sob-squared, recognition strong as pain. Before she could break and run, however, the boy—her boy—reached across Ganconer t
o touch her wrist, and she stilled. In turn, Ganconer let go of their arms and stepped forward, moving like a much older man, as Enzemblance rose to meet him.

  “Who said ye might bring them forth, tithe-payer? Who gave ye leave to release that which is mine?”

  Her claws flexed. But Ganconer only shook his head and smiled, as if to say: Who do ye think?

  For: “I, daughter,” the same voice as before answered from the brugh’s mouth. “Who else?”

  Shadow stamped a void across the hillside, like night’s own tongue spilling out, as every standing stone came alive with blue-violet St. Elmo’s fire, eldritch-crackling aurora washing upwards. A shape loomed over them, much like some barely pubescent girl, but monstrously huge: eight feet tall, at the very least. Its coltishly long limbs were barely covered by a tunic and skirt of fine white birch-bark, while hair of the same white hung to its knees, woven thick with green leaves. It stepped forward, smiling, and where its feet fell flowers bloomed, like icy little stars.

  ’Tis she, herself. That great changeling hoor. We might ha’ re-made this filthy world altogether, if no’ for her.

  Wasn’t you who burned, though, was it? Jo couldn’t stop herself from thinking, ill-advisedly. Not in the end. And saw Davina snicker, approvingly, at Euwphaim’s reaction.

  Yeah, baby. That’s my girl.

  “Grandmere,” Roke murmured, bowing stiffly. His cousins followed suit, curt as puppets, their strings jerked by tradition. While Glauce Lady Druir simply nodded her lofty head in return and moved on, halting in front of Carra Devize, to whose level she lowered herself slowly, voice the creaky rustling of a thousand wind-tossed trees.

  “Th’art Jonet Devize’s kin indeed, I see,” she said with interest. “A powerful witch wi’ a soft soul, that one—I liked her well, and much misliked what came tae pass, regards her. Yet she fell in wi’ bad company.”

  Carra swallowed, managing the closest thing to a curtesy she could.

  “Milady,” she said, at last. “We come to—beg a boon of you, to barter for this woman and her child. We bring . . . uh, I mean—we meant to bring a tithe and just . . . forgot. Which is on me, totally—”

  Lady Glauce lifted a hand, gently. “Child,” she said, amused. “Think’st thou that ye, of any, must bow and scrape, a mere supplicant? I knew yuir mother as well as yuir ancestress, Carraclough Devize, who had her blood from my son’s son; long have I thought tae see ye and am well-satisfied, now I do. Therefore thou needst not pay for any privilege thou might ask of me, this ane time only.”

  “Mother,” Enzemblance began, but fell silent a second later, quelled by a glance; her face flushed blotchily, grey-green, in the stones’ werelight. Finally, voice gone dead, she asked: “Must I truly lose my handmaid, then, and wi’ no recompense?”

  “Hast kept her long enough, Enzemblance—far beyond time, for the littleness of her transgression. And as for the child. . . .”

  “He I may keep, at least! He, who was born t’our ways, knowing no others—”

  The boy flinched, hand tightening on Galit’s arm, and Kim put his head down, as though about to charge.

  “Nay, Enzemblance,” Lady Glauce told her. “’Tis done. Both will return tae the Iron Cities and be left alone, from now on. Dost ken my meaning?” Enzemblance didn’t answer. “Gie me yuir word, as thy fealty requires.”

  “Yes, then, Mother.”

  The words eked out, barely audible, strained between those dreadful teeth. Lady Glauce acknowledged them by laying a gentle finger on Galit’s throat-piece: the root-torc shrivelled, unravelling, crumbling under its own age. Galit lifted both hands to her throat, warily, and stroked its dirty skin, disbelief giving way to amazement.

  “Free,” she said, hoarse. “We’re—Elver, come here! We can go home now, baby. We can go.”

  As Ganconer grimaced, entirely forgotten, the boy threw his arms ’round his mother’s waist and grinned up at her, obviously happy to see her so happy, even with tears in her eyes.

  “Where’s home?” he asked.

  Kim huffed out a held breath, wavering slightly; Carra and Jude exchanged glances; Horse-Kicker smiled, widely. Roke put an arm around Judy, who let him.

  Jo felt her own shoulders slump, filled with relief: Over, thank Christ. Nothing left now but to find our path and show the kiddie Toronto.

  But: Nay, Euwphaim’s voice replied, louder—closer—than Jo’d ever before heard it. I think no’.

  Goddamnit, Jo! Davina’s chimed in at the same time, already dimming. The fuck did I tell you?

  What I knew already, idjit, Jo thought. How I was only a tool, a means to my own undoing. How I should never have let her in, but bid her blow away instead, straight down to bloody hell.

  Then her grandmother, having forced herself headlong into Jo’s flesh without any shred of permission, had full control; the angel’s black Mark burned like ice, tainting, betraying. And with a deep, dark blink, she—herself—was all but gone.

  Watch out! Carra heard someone cry, back beyond the tree-line: a ghost’s thin voice, unfamiliar but angry, from far enough away it barely grazed her mind. While another—grim and gloating, Scots-burred, a fresh, black joy in every rasping note of it—answered: “Too late, American.”

  Much as Jodice Glouwer no doubt knew her by sight as well as reputation, so Carra knew Jo. Janis and Sy had worked with her more often, but that didn’t matter; she was distinctive even at a distance, with her close-cropped hair and her broad strong form. Now she strode towards the brugh, usually sad but pleasant face set in a parodic menace-rictus, with blue flame eddying from her brow like a crown and her eyes gone black as pitch.

  Kim boggled. “The fuck is that?”

  “Jo Glouwer,” Sy supplied, but Carra just shook her head. Even from here, she could see a small but intense nimbus spread like a demi-ruff at the top of Jo’s spine, limning the uppermost vertebra from the skull’s base; she pointed it out to Jude, who nodded.

  Who’s your friend? he no doubt remembered her asking him once, under similar circumstances.

  It hadn’t taken much effort to separate him from whatever was attempting to ride him, that time—but then again, said thing hadn’t already been piloting him around, or throwing off enough hexation to curse things down to Lake Ontario.

  So: “Not any more,” was all she said, therefore. And yanked Sy out of the way along with her to let Jo-plus-one go by.

  On the other side, Judy Kiss took one look and spat. “Fucking Spooky Grandma.”

  Faced with a new enemy, Enzemblance turned, claws up, son and brother moving too, to form a protective wall between not-Jo and their matriarch. But Lady Glauce simply watched the interloper come, unsurprised, as though it were someone she would always recognize, whether clothed in someone else’s skin or not.

  “Euwphaim Glouwer,” she said. “For our auld acquaintance’s sake do I give thee greeting, accounting thee welcome upon my lands and within step of my home, so long as ye keep the peace.”

  Jo’s mouth sneered. “High courtesies, and from such a noble lady! Yet they mean nowt to me, who ye swore compact wi’ and then threw over.”

  “’Twas thyself first lied, in that compact,” Lady Glauce pointed out.

  “As the De’il commands, him being Lord of Lies. Yet ye owe me naetheless—me, my sisters, my Black Angel, all.”

  “Thy claim surprises me not one jot.”

  “Doubtless,” Euwphaim replied, raising Jo’s hands. Then declared, voice deepening: “But ’tis of nae matter: now I seize that which ye thought tae keep from me, seeing y’have grown it sae far it can barely be contained in this earth-warren ye thought tae hide yuirselves in. And in doing so, I call upon him who laid the world’s foundations, along wi’ his kin—Ashreel Maskim, my sweet laird, Black Man of the Five-Family Coven’s Sabbat! Wi’ the Stane of Druir above and below me, on my left hand as well as my right, I call upon those Seven who were One and shall
be again!”

  A sigil-mark bloomed at the crook of one of Jo’s elbows, blackly luminous, before sliding to beam forth—with ten times its original force—from her upraised palm. Carra twisted aside, shielding her eyes, as the evocation continued—

  All ye of the Coven, five families represented here, in manner great or small—Roke and Druir, Devize and Glouwer, that Rusk who lent her relic tae the fight . . . aye, even ye of Clan Sidderstane, pale shadows of yuir so-called betters! Listen, you thralls and nobodies, you empty vessels! Listen as I name the agents of yuir doom and the doom of all!

  The end of everything, human or otherwise, right here—Dourvale, the Shore and brugh alike, well-known to exist in two countries, two centuries, at once. A perfect place, in other words, for absolutely anything to happen.

  “Arralu-Allatu Namtaru Maskim,

  “Assaku Utukku Lammyatu Maskim,

  “Ekimmu Gallu-Alu Maskim,

  “Maskim Maskim Maskim.”

  With all the frenzy of the desperate, Sy bolted towards her, swinging his strongest haymaker. But not-Jo (Euwphaim, she’s Euwphaim Glouwer, just like Ygerna said) merely angled her palm to block it, detonation hurling him backwards as if he’d grabbed a live transformer plug. Unsure if he was still alive, Carra charged as well, Jude hard on her heels, only to have him pull her down instead, flinging up one more shield—an equally useless gesture, it turned out. Because the cone of summoning was already beginning to ring Euwphaim—a looped conflagration, tornado-whipped exponentially higher and faster with every new rotation, which only intensified, even as the drain it cast made Jude’s purple glow start to stutter, shrink, fail.

  Roke and Judy dropped down beside them, taking advantage of what little shield-time might be left, as Carra—her hair flattened in the rising wind—jabbed a finger at the rusty nail Roke still clutched. “Use it!”

  Roke shook his head, grimly. “No good. That thing, over there. . . .” He pointed at what was forming midway between Euwphaim and Glauce, a twisting pillar of eye-wrenching distortion, tall enough to score the sky. “. . . requires somebody just a tad more holy than my bad self to strike it down. If B. had just gotten over her fucking attitude and rode along, she might’ve been able to do something. But. . . .”