We Will All Go Down Together (38 page)

Because:
My family scares the fuck out of me, and I’m one of them. So what do you think they do to real people? People like you? Eat them, from the inside out. Make them into jewellery and wear them. Drag them down into their home, play with them awhile, and when they’re bored, they just leave them there, alone in the dark, forever. Who’s gonna help me with that, exactly?

Fr. Gowther writhed, a hook-caught worm. Yet Mac still knew him well enough to know exactly what his comeback would have been, had he heard said any of the above out loud—

With God, Maccabee, all things are possible. They
must
be. You have to believe that.

Well . . . yeah. And no.

You
have to,
Mac thought.
But me?

“Mac, son. . . .” Fr. Gowther managed, at last. “. . . for God’s own sake, don’t
do
this. Not to—”

“
You?
”

“. . . yourself. . . .”

Then it was over.

Next thing Mac could remember, he was lying face-down on the cathedral stones, swearing over and over:
Oh God, if you only accept my profession here, I will never do that again, ever. Not to anyone.

Which he hadn’t, since—not yet, anyhow. Yet what he knew now, with the Church securely reframed in his rear-view, was that it’d been the
human
in him that’d driven him to destroy his best friend in order to get something he’d damn well known even then, on some level, he’d eventually throw away.

That was the end between them, Fr. Gowther and he. Oh, Mac’d tried to cover his tracks, to erase the memory of what he’d done, but it hadn’t helped; every time Fr. Gowther saw Mac after that, he’d
known
that something must have happened (just not what). That awful feeling of violation, with the poor, good old priest never knowing for sure whether he’d been the rapist or the rape-ee . . . a seed of doubt, shoved down deep inside to bloom slowly, stretching the lobes of his faith until they tore themselves apart.

Oh, but Mac hadn’t actually
killed
him, not directly.

He hadn’t had to.

Ten years after his ill-fated ordination ceremony, Mac found himself playing secretary during a “debriefing” in one of the Connaught’s infamous Hold Rooms, watching Sr. Blandina beat the (literally) holy crap out of a strix with a Bible roughly the size of her own torso. Smell of burnt flesh and feathers, black blood everywhere, the strix screaming guttural Greek curses—

And Blandina, right there in the middle of it all, implacably fearless, flushed with a pride that seemed virtually indistinguishable from rage at the prospect of doing God’s good work. Blandina, passing fatal judgment on this bloodsucking owl-lady like it wasn’t just her job, but her actual
pleasure
. Catching his eye on the rebound, pausing for another swing,
The Shield’s
Vic fucking Mackey with his phone book.

She had her own issues with monsters, obviously. Nobody joined the O.S.P. because they were huge
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
fans, but because they’d known (someone) who’d encountered (something)—with the emphasis always clearly on “thing” and the
de
-emphasis on whoever that particular someone might have been. Whoever that’d been for Blandina, meanwhile, they’d already been avenged a hundred-fold since her profession—her list of righteous kills was truly legendary, as Mac should know, since a good part of his duties at the Connaught involved updating Monsignor Chu’s copy of the
Bestiary ad Noctem
with fresh examples of how she’d discovered the best way to kill whatever they pitted her against: a loogaroo, adze, vrykolakos—or an ogre or goblin. A glaistig or knocker, undine or rusalka, a wili, a water-leaper, troll or huldre-maiden, brown boggart, pixie or boggledy-bo. . . .

They were none of them harmless, these pathetically stranded slop-overs, who’d either failed to make the last boat for Tír-na-nÓg or decided, for reasons all their own—much like Lady Glauce—to stick around and give it the old college try, even while iron swarmed across the world around them. Hell, Mac had raised his hand, too, at a few of those hunt-planning meetings; who really wanted a nucklavee in Lake Ontario, aside from the nucklavee itself? But they were still his blood, his distant relatives, and the further they crept to the top of Blandina’s hit-list, the more comfortably he could see his own name one day being written there, once she figured it all out. As he knew, without question, that she would.

“But what if they’re not actually doing anything . . . monstrous, these creatures?” He asked her, later, over a late-night snack at the local greasy spoon. “What then, Sister?”

To which she responded by looking at him with a kind of blank-pure lack of understanding that would have been oddly touching if it hadn’t been so damn scary.

And said—“It’s not what they
do
or don’t do. It’s what they
are
. You should know that, Father. . . .”

Mac went home that night to the Saint Mike’s Rectory, alone, as ever. He sat chain-smoking in his room, thinking about how badly he wanted to call Fr. Gowther and tell him something, anything. He didn’t even know what. Except that Fr. Gowther probably wouldn’t have remembered who Mac
was
, at that point, even if he hadn’t already been dead for a year and a half and buried back home in Nova Scotia, on the wrong side of the cemetery.

Mac could still see things other people couldn’t; the Church hadn’t done shit about
that
, though it did keep most of them at bay. What he hadn’t initially known, however, was that he could even see things his own family couldn’t—and those things, the Church had no visible effect on at all. They breezed in and out like the seal of God’s protection was made of tissue paper, maybe because they didn’t recognize it, or maybe because it didn’t recognize
them
. Either way, Mac remained the one caught seeing,
having
to see. And if he didn’t want to anymore, there was only one way out: through the front fucking door.

Blandina had been a reason to stay too, once. But all the hot-eyed looks in the world couldn’t change the fact that, one day, she’d realize there was a specific reason he kept on suggesting that maybe monsters might just be people with something a little bit extra, if you only gave them the chance to prove it. And that’d be when he’d have to make a separate peace with the
Ordo
or die like a dog. Or live on in a cage, which would be far, far worse—

Which returned him, rather neatly, to the conundrum at hand: how to do Le Prof’s job, yet emerge with skin intact, given who Mac might find himself dealing with. How to make sure he got paid, and also that the blame (if any) fell directly on the person who’d set this particular snatch-and-grab in motion, rather than the person whose hands did the actual snatching and grabbing.

Blandina at his mental ear, her hot breath intimate as ever:
Did you think we didn’t know what you were?
Chased by Saracen, a half-second later, murmuring just as low, burred words apple-scented:
Yuir no’ like them, coz; ye never will be. Yet ye may come by the
brugh
when it suits ye, by high way or low—if ye’ve no’ forgot how tae walk either road yet, in all yuir human wanderings. . . .

That would take a toll, he knew—a tithe, rather. As everything did. And would it be worth it, in the end?

Well.

How could it not be?

Five hours later saw Mac ducking and dodging his way through the eddying airport crowds with the Templars already at his heels.

They’d been easy enough to spot, all hanging around by the baggage carousel like that—a sleek group of dudes in suits, with discreet little red cross-pins at their lapels and wicked little ceramic machetes nesting in scabbards sewn along the spines of their coats. Nothing that’d set a metal detector off, not to mention nothing someone who wasn’t already used to hanging with covertly armed nuns would probably pick up on, but it made Mac nervous, nonetheless . . . so much so he’d turned his glamer on early and moved towards them only in sketchy, sidelong increments, like an invisible crab.

What got him particularly wary was the man the Templars had apparently come to meet—the one Le Prof called Cordellion Federoi. In many ways, he seemed the only true Templar in the bunch: career soldier’s bearing, neatly bearded, a high-end pair of wrap-around sunglasses perfectly adjusted to hide the upside-down crosses branded over his seared-blind eyes.

’E is one of the Kissed, the inner circle,
Le Prof told him.
That’s what they call them.

One of the original Nine, you mean?
Mac asked.

To which Le Prof frowned, disappointed by Mac’s credulity, and replied—
Of course not. Don’t be fooled by the accoutrements; no matter what they may ’ave done to themselves, they’re just
people
, M’sieu Roke.

The implication being: odd people, yes. Strange people. Living up to a fearsome and dramatic legend, wielding swords, kissing the Devil’s ass (or maybe just each others’). But . . . 

(
But.
)

. . . while Mac could see how thinking that might keep the old guy feeling safe at night, he was content to go with his own instincts, and those said—not so much. Especially since every time Mac moved closer, he saw those obviously dead eyes flick his way, automatic as a REM-sleep quiver, like Cordellion was cruising him telepathically.

He can SEE me,
Mac thought.
Or knows he should be able to. And can’t.

The plan, as such, was simplicity itself: wait ’til the “hatbox” slid down the chute, snatch and grab, then take off running. Aside from Cordellion, the Templars didn’t read as having any sort of real magical signature, so even if they
did
somehow twig to what was going on, there was only so far they could really follow him—into the nearest guys’ john, into the handicapped stall, but no farther. Not onto the ley line only Mac could see blazing underfoot; certainly not into the Dourvale
brugh
via the legendary “low road,” once he’d made that particular connection—if he
could
make it before one of them ran him straight through the spine. It’d been a while for him, after all—

Yet blood will out,
Mac told himself, grimly. And told the guy standing next to him, without preamble: “Give me your cell phone.”

“Say hella-
what
?” Dudester replied, goggling.

No time for subtlety. “
Give
,” Mac repeated, making with the full Fae power-stare, and the guy did, without further question. Like he’d been tapped good and hard between the eyes with a velvet-wrapped ball-peen hammer.

Mac dialled one number, spoke briefly, then sent two equally brief, time-sensitive text messages to two other—completely different—numbers. And leaned back against the wall to wait.

The page summoning Cordellion to the Information Desk—by name, no less, which produced exactly the kind of reaction Mac had hoped for—came through just as human Templars One and Two swung the “hatbox” reverently up, carrying it by its handles as they trailed dutifully after their leader. Mac passed neatly
between
them
like a black wind, tearing the “hatbox” free and throwing a subsidiary glamer over it as well, though the extra strain of maintaining two separate illusions was already enough to make him stagger, vertiginously. He blundered noisily over towards the little stick-man figure sign, bumping into an older lady and a man in a wheelchair on the way, both of whom swore loudly.

Behind him, he felt Cordellion’s empty gaze
switch on
, sweeping sharply after him even as the other Templars cried out to each other in confusion, swapping semi-Mediaeval French insults:
Guiche, du Metz, où est la tête du grand-maître? Allez! Trouvez-la! I know not—’tis pas ma faute! O, but you lie—ta bouche dans le cul du diable, imbécile, et que celle de ta mère y soit avant la tienne!

Under that, however, came Cordellion’s voice, low and dark with a blood-deep thrum to it, which reached straight inside Mac’s defences.

Saying, as though in Mac’s own ear—“Ah, there you are, thief.
Je vous vois clairement, et je sais où vous vois dirigez. . . .
”

Not yet, you don’t,
Mac thought, grimly. And broke through the washroom doors with the “hatbox” hugged to his chest and both elbows up, like a linebacker, knocking some poor bastard who’d only wanted to dry his hands before catching a flight to wherever right on his ass. No time for sympathy—Mac vaulted over the man’s prone body, skidded past the first three stalls, and barricaded himself inside the last, double-wide one.

He shifted the “hatbox” under one arm and hammered on the wall with the other, feeling like an idiot as he yelled: “Grandmere, hear me! Your daughter Miliner’s son craves to do you homage, with apologies for my long absence . . . I come to you by the low road, begging entry!”

Behind him, the doors banged open and the fallen man groaned, as if kicked. Mac felt the plaster warm under his fingers, praying it wasn’t his imagination; was that a subtle pinkening hovering beneath the once-white expanse of paint? A flash of flat cheekbone, sly silvery eye, eerily lit-from-within half-quirk of teeth?

(
What is’t ye dream of, nephew?
)

You,
aunt. For this one time, and only:
You.

Ah well, then. I am answered.

Time slowed, but only in the ordered world—that roundhouse one Templar gave the stall door, half-ripping it off its hinges, became nothing more than a slap that felt like a kiss, molasses-soft. Mac saw the wall peel back in front of him like a lip, fungal, stop-motion; his hand immediately sank to the wrist, time-space ripples scurrying out sidelong. At which point he felt another hand, slim and nail-less, knit most of its fingers with his, and knew exactly who it must belong to—so he braced himself as it pulled hard, teeth gritted, giving himself over entirely to what was no longer refutable.

Was that another hand, grabbing for his shoulder? Fingers grasping painfully hard and—slipping?