We Will All Go Down Together

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

  He trailed off, as if only now realizing what this meant. And a jolt of comprehension ran through Carra’s mind, completing Roke’s sentence for them both:

  . . . when angels get called on, all that’s really left to turn to is God. And He is something we are none of us qualified to speak either to, or for.

  Monsters against monsters. It’d seemed like a pretty good plan back in Abbott’s office. Now Carra couldn’t remember if she’d ever really thought it would work, or if this’d just been an elaborate way to commit suicide, all along.

  Idiot survival instinct had carried her thus far, made her hope for love, even in the mouth of death. But now—as the distortion overhead split open, spilling a terrible white light into the world—Carra Devize felt true despair fill her, render her sick and lightheaded, tempt her with the relief of defeat. For if she really was as powerless against what peered through as its presence made her feel, then how would trying to stop it be any responsibility of hers?

  Let someone else try, while she crouched here in the grass with Jude’s arms around her, watching the only other man she might have built a life with suffer; let them try and fail, try and die. Let everyone and everything die, likewise.

  Nothing to do with me, she thought, numbly. Nothing to do. Nothing.

  Now here and nowhere, both at once. Just like the writing said.

  Then the angel stepped down, and Carra shut her eyes, knowing it was only the weakest sort of half-measure. Because, of course—

  —she could still see.

  The earth groaned beneath Ashreel Maskim’s weight, though it seemed to have no substance at all: light without heat, a frozen blood-fountain, a mile-high volcano blast seen through the telescope’s wrong end. Even Glauce Druir bent her huge head away from that awful sight. Only Euwphaim gazed upon it freely, Jo’s burnt eyes streaming, both vindictive and vindicated after centuries of waiting.

  “Lord!” she howled. “At last ye come! At last, the Work begins!”

  As she spread her arms, the blackness of the Mark swept over her, cutting her out—a living silhouette—and Carra watched Euwphaim’s real face flicker where Jo’s should be, a mask made from malice, crying out: “Call yuir brethren, and beneath the Seven’s weight, crack this world beyond repair! Do it now, now, and together we will say—”

  “. . . fuck that shit.”

  As a battle-cry, it left somewhat to be desired. Yet it bore Judy Kiss upright against the roaring wind, stepping through the dregs of Jude’s shield like cobweb and shoving Euwphaim-Jo aside to take her place beneath the cone, where she yelled up into the angel’s face—

  “Ashreel Maskim, Confusion-maker, This One That Wears Us! He told me all about you, you know—outcast World-makers, too desperate for heaven and too cowardly for hell, but too arrogant for anything else.” That sly, alien mirth creeping back into her voice, irretrievably sulphur-tainted. “Always thinking just because you built the arena that gives you the right to call the game, no matter who else might be playing.”

  ::Do I know you, speaker?:: the angel asked from everywhere at once—as soft and strong as rot, as entropy. To which Judy just laughed, bitterly.

  “Maybe,” she allowed. “Though if you did, you’d know one fuck of a lot more than I do.”

  A silence followed, everyone—the Fae included—braced to hear what the response might be. While Carra slid sideways, unnnoticed by all, staying low and quiet. Not even daring to consider what she might be doing or why, lest the angel hear it.

  ::I see you, now,:: Ashreel Maskim said, at last. ::Thrown out, but still with a foothold inside her, a place to squirm into, whenever it pleases. Not one of us, though we were kin, marking us as kin still—her too, so long as you consent to wear her.:: With a faint touch of sadism, born more of boredom than aught else, it added: ::This one who tells you of me—of us. I can give you his name.::

  “Got that offer before, thanks,” Judy replied, coolly. “Didn’t believe it then, and I don’t now. And that’s ’cause angels lie.”

  ::Not all.::

  “Enough.”

  Something too remote to be sadness filled Ashreel’s voice. ::Not the Host, who remain with Him, bound to truth and silence both, by He who decided that suffering must always be the price of choice. Can you fault us for fleeing that stasis, for taking the chance—any chance, at all—of freedom?::

  Judy didn’t shake her head, but she didn’t exactly nod, either. Just stood there with her half-Nobody eyes all lit up like Satan’s version of Christmas morning, and replied—“Not my call. So . . . that it, or what? We done yet?”

  Euwphaim raised eyes and hands together towards the still-spinning clouds in furious supplication. But all she got by way of return were these words, pronounced with something close to sorrow—

  ::I think . . . since he who marked you still has uses for you, Judy Kiss, then yes. Forgive me, Euwphaim. But with this other interest blocking my—our—way, I no longer have any business here.::

  “NO!” Euwphaim’s fury blazed up, so great she half-left Jo’s body and stretched forth on a conduit of ectoplasm, near-solid with rage. “Ye promised! Five hundred year and more agone, ye promised me my vengeance!”

  ::Did I? Well. As I have been assured on good authority . . . the word of an angel is not always reliable.::

  Pandaemonium. Over the brain-twisting sound of a portal torn through the world’s fabric, collapsing in on itself, the thunder-bright aftershocks of reality resealing in its wake, Jo felt a hand slip into hers—small, cold, solid—and grip her hard, fingers fisting ten into twenty, two into one.

  We really should stick together, a voice said against her inner ear. Girls like us.

  Beside her, Carra Devize rose up from the grass, grinning. And a floodgate of strength snapped open through their joined palms, jolting memories free: Dav, Ross, and herself, all those days of dull, grinding, cleansing work, peeling her aura of soaked-up ectoplasm like callus from a heel . . . finally knowing what she was made for and doing it, then doing whatever she pleased after without fear of loss, of pain, the hole gaping always open. Those days when she’d been, strange as it might bloody seem, given what-all had passed her way since—oh, and what was the word?

  (Right, she had it now: happy.)

  A reflex, psi and magic intertwined like blood, like breath—purely autonomic. Jo put hands to scalp and pulled, hard enough she tore her own aura away in two halves, an invisible snake shedding invisible skin. Both Davina and Euwphaim whirled free, cast out, expelled—but before Euwphaim could turn on them, Carra had already lashed out, sent her flinging straight at Lady Glauce, who put up one huge hand to catch her ’round the nonexistent waist, neat as a frog with flies.

  Canna, ye canna, ye can not—

  “Oh no?” Lady Glauce inquired, lethal-calm. And smiled, a slow, dreadful, hungry look spreading ’cross her child’s face, as Euwphaim struggled in her grip; when she angled it to include Galit and Elver Michaels, mother and son both cringed back, the one slapping her palm over the other’s eyes, protectively.

  “Nay, dinna fear,” Lady Glauce told them. “’Tis but the old exchange—the tithe for thy freedoms, paid at last. ‘This for me,’ as the song doth go, ‘and that for thee.’”

  Ye little limb! shrieked Euwphaim at Jodice, then struck out at Glauce, poisonous yet impotent. And you, ye canna keep me! My soul is for another place entire, another master, fairly sold, as my place be fairly earned—!

  “Yet cast away, we saw, as if no longer wanted,” said Glauce, pleasantly. “So I’ve as good a claim as any—finder’s right, for that this land be always mine, in this time as well as t’other.”

  Euwphaim twisted about, one arm elongating back towards Jo like pulled taffy, hand clawed but trembling. Yet this one has more claim than ye by far, and well she kens it! For all I told ye, Jodice, when ye came into your gift and after—th’advice I gave in yuir time of worst distress—will ye no’
stand by me now and take me back in?

  Jo stared, her own hand still linked with Carra’s, clutching it for strength. Slowly, she shook her head. Forced out the words in a raw whisper—

  “God grant you what you asked for, Nana . . . but not me.”

  Euwphaim’s screams rose up, almost drowned in Lady Glauce’s laughter. “Now, Euwphaim, fret not—have ye no’ always coveted my Stane? Come closer then, witch. Touch it as thou please’st, now and ever.” Folding the wraith close in her arms and floating backwards towards the brugh-door, Glauce’s voice fell to a whisper, promising: “I’ll hinder thee no longer.”

  As they fell out of sight, sinking down into the mound, those screams suddenly tailed off in a long, echoing, falling note, as if their source were hurtling away some unimaginable distance at horrendous speed. Enzemblance tried to grab at her mother’s sleeve, but the pull seized her too, sucking her down as though the earth had turned to quicksand while the great stone slabs of the door swung together, locking fast. Saracen and Minion leapt to Enzemblance’s side, caught her under the arms, and pulled, but their strength was no match for the closing brugh’s gravity. Slowly, inch by inch, Enzemblance sank downward. . . .

  . . . until Mac Roke sprinted past them, relic nail in one hand, hammer in the other. He fell to his knees, set the spike’s point to brugh-skin, raised his hammer high, and hesitated for one brief second. Jo understood why well enough, given what she’d just done herself—this was an act from which there was no going back. Whatever family Roke had left, monstrous as it might be, would be forever lost.

  (But it is time, grandson, and past time. So get it done, for once and all, and quickly.)

  Lady Glauce’s voice, quivering up through Jo’s feet; she saw gooseflesh on Carra’s arms and knew the other girl felt it, too—more strongly than her, probably. Though not so strong as Roke, his jaw set, those too-blue eyes narrowing.

  Grandmere, I will.

  The hammer came down hard, nail driving deep, as if Stane were flesh. Light flashed from the impact. Again and again Mac hammered, drawing lightning, driving the spike ever deeper. Sealing the brugh shut.

  Enzemblance wailed, a sound both pitiful and terrifying; Saracen and Minion, forced to let go, watched her sink to the neck, every shred of youth and power flaking away ’til nothing but a bare toothless mask remained above ground, nested in hair that withered like sedge. With one final blow, Mac sat back, breathing heavy—then looked her way and froze.

  “Holy. . . .” he began, choking off. Enzemblance winced.

  “Maccabee,” she whispered. “Ha’ ye no pity at all for yuir ane flesh and blood?”

  Roke stared at her a long moment—two good beats of the heart, by Jo’s own count. “Guess not,” he replied, finally.

  Adding, internally: No more than you for my mother or father. No more than you for me.

  “Then this is . . . the end of all things, surely. . . .”

  Coldly: “For you.”

  And with that, Mac stomped down hard, right on his aunt’s face—drove her into the ground until the earth closed over, rock lapping her like lava. ’Til only a few decaying strands of hair remained—first red-tinged yet, then grey, then white—sticking from a solid slab of Stane.

  “There,” he said, eventually. “There.”

  Done.

  Beside him, Saracen went stumbling back, ankles turning; Mac turned to see his cousin fold, sly face crumpling, luxuriant backwards lashes already gummed with tears. Minion held him up, just barely.

  “A pox on ye, coz,” Saracen whispered, grief-raw, waving away any attempt at apology. “Nay, forbye! Curses hound thee now and forever, who e’en once took side wi’ outlanders against his ane. A foul life live, and an ill death may ye dee.”

  After which, without further ado, he and Minion melted away back into the woods, there and gone in the very same instant. Like leaves turning in fall, or ice to water. Like frost silvering fruit, blackening it to the heart.

  Glamour, Jo thought. And shivered.

  At the forest’s edge, Davina still eddied in the air as if unsure of what to do next. She looked at Jo, who studied her hungrily, knowing this was the last time she’d see her, in any form: rexed red hair, body hard and boyish, green-apple breasts hid under the camo shirt she’d worn to their last job; that devil’s mouth and those brash eyes, abashed by nothing.

  When had she ever looked so unsure of what to do next? Alive, she would’ve lit another cig, leaned back and flirted, considering her options. But they both knew what those were.

  Go on, love, Jo projected in her direction. Sorry for trying to keep you, let alone how. But ’twas only because—

  ’Cause I filled your hole, baby?

  You could call it that, yeah.

  Dav laughed, or mimed doing it, shoulders rising in one last shrug. Smoke rose around her, blurring her from the toes up in a personal dry-ice shroud, though at least Jo didn’t see that bloody fake cigarette in her hand, for which she was grateful.

  Always one to make an exit, she thought, a grim shell of satisfaction forming like a lid over the same dreadful, yearning pit of want, as though she might somehow pretend it away. Then thinking, in the same breath: Oh Christ, but I miss you, Dav. So bloody much.

  I know. But how can ya, when you won’t even let me leave?

  Jo gave her the V for fuck off, and saw her laugh again, drinking in the details longingly—glint of light on her dead teeth, the freckles on her cheeks, the way her nose wrinkled, a stroked cat’s. Then watched as she dispersed, blowing away.

  Love you, she thought again, one last time. And made herself turn away, with a wrench—just in time to catch another drama playing out, back amongst the standing stones.

  Ganconer at the edge of it all, Galit and Kim in the middle with Elver between. Kim kept his hands to himself, eyes eating Galit alive; Galit didn’t even seem to notice, consumed as she was with taking stock, every mundane thing around her a treat after so many years pent away. She must’ve described much of this to Elver over that time, yet never been able to prove her thesis more than speculation—to him it was metaphor only, nothing like the dim little world he knew. And now here it was, all around him; no wonder he could barely seem to speak.

  “You came,” Galit said again, gaze finally returning to Kim. “I hoped . . . oh, I hoped, but I didn’t know. You didn’t have to do that, Josh. I’d’ve understood if you hadn’t.”

  He shook his head, tears in his eyes. “Should’ve come sooner,” he said. “Making you wait all this time—I don’t think I can ever forgive myself.”

  “No,” she said, “don’t be stupid. You’d’ve died if you’d tried earlier. There were rooms full of bones, down there . . . I don’t want to think about it. But you needed her—” She nodded at Carra. “And the nephew, with the nail . . . that girlfriend of his. The magician. Her.” Now she was pointing at Jo, who flushed, uncomfortably. “All of them. And I’m grateful, Josh. I’m so damn grateful.”

  Kim nodded, then looked at Ganconer. “What about him?” he asked.

  Galit looked down at Elver. “Do you have them?”

  “Aye, Mumma.”

  Carefully, the boy approached, deliberately making enough noise that Ganconer looked up—raised his head, anyhow. The wooden eyes were horribly kept, infected and pussy around their edges, unhealed even after all this time; he seemed to be weeping, a constant stream of sticky yellowish rheum.

  “Is’t you, Elver?” Ganconer asked.

  “Yes, sir. I have aught for you.”

  The boy rummaged inside his garments, withdrew something, clinking slightly. He touched Ganconer’s hand, uncurling it gently, and tipped two things—round, wet, delicate—into his palm.

  “No,” Ganconcer breathed.

  “Lady Glauce gave them to Mumma,” Elver said. “She told us wait and give you them later, when ’twas all finished.”

  “No,” Ga
nconer repeated.

  But: “Yes,” Galit replied, crossing to him. “May I . . . let me. Hold still, just a moment. . . .”

  There followed some business that Jo, though rarely squeamish, was happy not to see clearly. Then Ganconer opened his own eyes, at long last; these focused first on Galit, who smiled, then down towards Elver, where they lingered some time, awash with far more healthy tears.

  He put out his hand, wavering. Touched the solemn little face, with its pale cheeks, its dark and wary stare.

  “Oh, my boy,” he said, finally, so dim and wet the words barely made sense. “Oh, you. My boy.”

  After, they drove their various vehicles as close to the former Dourvale brugh as the woods would allow, finding it a surprisingly easy task now that the net of glamour had collapsed, buried along with Euwphaim and Lady Glauce. Separating into little sub-groups, the two parties made their farewells to the place and each other as the cold moon peered down through the trees.

  “That felt . . . really good,” Mac Roke said, examining the hilltop scar—a mere scrape of chalk under dirt and dead grass, last red-grey twists of hair already blown away to line bird-nests or festoon bushes—which was all that was now left to mark where Enzemblance Druir had once lain. “Real Warrior of God stuff—righteous, almost.”

  “Aye,” Jo agreed, left so exhausted in her own double epiphany’s wake, her tongue seemed to think she was drunk. “You’ll no’ be asked back for dinner anytime soon, I’m thinking.”

  “Suits me. All they ever served was rotten apples and dead leaves anyhow, glamoured to taste like something else.”

  “What a way to talk. And you a priest.”

  “Defrocked.”

  “Oh, I’d clean forgot. How’s that work, exactly? Always wondered.”