The Brothers Cabal (44 page)

‘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 recovering.

‘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?'

‘Your guns cannot harm me.
You
cannot harm me.'

‘Ah,' said Johannes Cabal. He slid the .577 revolver back into its holster. ‘I cannot
kill
you. Harm, however, is a broader category.' He reached into an inside pocket and produced a handle rendered in steel, dark wood, and cheap ivory. With a
snik
, a blade snapped out into position.

The hideous smile did not waver. ‘With that?'

‘With this.'

‘What makes you believe it will be any more efficacious than a bullet?'

‘For much the same reason surgeons don't carry out operations with a pistol. I will be requiring precision in a minute.'

At last, the smile faded. ‘You cannot hurt me.'

‘
Hurt
. As if you even know what that really means. Allow me to demonstrate.'

He did not raise the knife or even approach Rufus Maleficarus. Instead, he started to recite in carefully moderated tones sentences that the world had only heard three times before. The language was strange, belonging to a race that was long since extinct and not especially human when it had lived.

The effect was immediate. Maleficarus staggered as if stricken by a sudden illness, his face paling, his expression frantic. ‘Stop! What are you doing? What are you
doing
?'

Cabal finished a phrase, commented, ‘Why, summoning you, of course. The ritual is pathetically simple, but that was always deliberate on your part, wasn't it?' and continued with the strange, alien, yet eminently pronounceable words of power.

‘But … why? I am here! Right here!' Maleficarus fell to his knees. ‘Why?'

Cabal paused. For that moment, Maleficarus rallied, but not enough. Cabal examined the blade in his hand, and flicked away some lint at the pivot. ‘Because, as you so conceitedly noted, I cannot hurt you. I can, however, inconvenience you enormously.' He continued the ritual. With a groan, Maleficarus fell onto all fours.

Cabal watched him dispassionately. He had little enough sympathy for Rufus Maleficarus when he
was
Rufus Maleficarus. Now that he was merely a convenient vessel for a monstrous otherworldly energy dedicated to control and proliferation, Cabal regarded him with less compassion than one might regard the death of a bacterium within the blood of a recovering invalid. He felt the drag within his own spirit as it pulled the Ereshkigal animus towards him, tearing it from its anchorage in Maleficarus.

‘Please … Cabal … don't do this…'

‘Who's talking?' asked Cabal. ‘Not that it matters. In either case, nobody and nothing that I respect.'

With a ripple in the air, the Ereshkigal animus lost its last fingerhold on the physical frame of Maleficarus. His eyes rolled up in his skull, and he died, yet again.

Cabal could feel the animus drawing close, but he could see it, too, an oily disturbance in the light as if something were being dragged along behind the canvas scenery it pleases us to call ‘Reality'. Closer it came, and closer still, rendered eager to join with him by the terms of the ritual, yet reluctant, for it knew who and what he was. He said the words, the ancient words of power, and pulled it closer with every syllable.

And when it was one yard from him, he stopped, and smiled an unpleasant smile, and he said, ‘Actually, I've changed my mind. I don't think I'll summon you at all.'

The distortion wavered.

‘I don't suppose,' said Cabal conversationally, ‘
this
is something that's ever happened to you before, either. Previously you've always left this world by being evicted. Yet here you are, neither one thing nor another. That sounds like a very volatile state for something like you. Why, I shouldn't be at all surprised if you were just to'—he waved the fingers of his free hand—‘boil away into nothing.'