Page 6

Chapter 6

The Hero Business

We did a lot of blowing stuff up over the next few weeks, riding down dusty dirt paths and well-kept cobbled roads to find quiet backwoods villages, boring one-horse towns or heaving overcrowded cities. . . Wherever the emissaries of the Lords Celestine or Lords Devilish had managed to convince the locals to sign a pact, we’d come along and convince them to tear it up. Sometimes persuasion and logic got the job done; other times, we’d get chased out of town by an unexpectedly well-armed mob. We could’ve fought back, except for that whole ‘not killing the Mortals’ thing. Hells, most of the time, our only injuries came from trying to restrain either Corrigan or Temper from blasting our pursuers to death or drinking their blood. Fortunately, one of those two hotheads was usually sane enough to help us talk the other one down from going berserk. There’s something unsettling about witnessing a vampire kangaroo patting the cheek of an enraged thunderer while cooing soothingly. . . actually, it was worse when Corrigan tried to calm Temper down, which involved a lot of weeping and hugging and recounting of childhood traumas that the big brute had never even revealed to me before.

‘You wouldn’t understand,’ Corrigan had insisted one night when I’d confronted him privately about the matter– we were supposed to be best friends, after all, even though neither of us had much conception of what that meant.

‘You think my childhood wasn’t traumatic?’ I asked indignantly. ‘Or Galass? Or Alice? We’re wonderists, for fuck’s sake– trauma’s practically the only requirement for any sort of mystical attunement! I’ll bet even Aradeus got locked in a root cellar by his parents or touched inappropriately by some close relative when he was a kid.’

Corrigan ignored my tirades. Those nights when we were too far away or too unwelcome to find lodgings, he’d huddle with the kangaroo having deep heart-to-heart chats with a beast who didn’t even speak our language– or any other language that didn’t involve grunts, growls or the occasional hiss that preceded Temper ripping out the throat of the nearest angelic or demoniac before draining them of blood.

‘That can’t be healthy,’ Aradeus observed in the aftermath of our attack on an Auroral recruitment camp. ‘One would expect a vampiric being to become more robust with the consumption of blood, yet our comrade is looking increasingly bloated and sickly after these bouts of gluttony.’

‘Constipated is more likely,’ Alice said dismissively. She wasn’t especially fond of Temper, who was much too like the mystically engineered beasts of her own realm. ‘Look how he bears down on his haunches, clenching his teeth afterwards.’

Corrigan, looming behind us in a distinctly threatening manner, said, ‘Nobody fucking laugh, understand?’

Whenever Temper went into one of these post-gorging fits– which really did look like someone experiencing overwhelming constipation– he’d end with a single bound in the air, as high as his powerful hind legs would carry him, and land on his face, where he’d lie unconscious until morning. I swear, keeping a straight face during this performance required more self-discipline than performing a twelve-hour abnegation ritual.

Not even Galass could explain what was going on with Temper’s odd behaviour. She tried to link her attunement to the flow of the kangaroo’s blood to ease his discomfort, but her hair suddenly turned white and her hand shot away as if she’d been stung. Only after her tresses returned to their normal colour would she tell us that there was a planar breach inside Temper, like a mystical attunement that wasn’t able to pierce the veil between realms. That of course led to questions about where he’d come from in the first place, which was my cue to change the subject by going over the tactical plans for our next attack.

We’d drawn a line in the proverbial sand back in the Blastlands, where the Seven Brothers had become unwilling portals to this realm from the Auroral and Infernal demesnes. We’d vowed then that we would do whatever it took to prevent the Great Crusade from engulfing humanity. Most high-minded moralists skip over the ethical implications of such a vow, but Corrigan and I were mercenary war mages, Shame, when an Angelic Emissary, had witnessed the darkest depths of human desire and Alice, a demoniac, had been trained as a Justiciar by the great Hazidan Rosh herself, so we all knew there would be a hefty price for denying the Lords Celestine and Lords Devilish their precious crusade. As for Galass, she’d been raised as an Auroral Sublime, to be offered as a reward to Ascendant Princes doing the work of the Celestines upon the Mortal realm. She knew that every war got ugly, and trying to stop a war would likely get even uglier.

So we’d set one rule: no attacks on humans, not even if they’d given in to Auroral or Infernal blandishments. We would fight back if they came at us, and not hesitate to kill to save one of our crew, but otherwise, we’d leave Mortal recruits alone. Luckily, angelics and demoniacs alike considered human soldiers far beneath them, so they were generally housed separately. Once we’d given up trying to convince the humans to abandon their newly signed pacts, there was almost always an opportunity to leave a trail of demoniac or angelic corpses to help the locals reconsider the merits of our well-put arguments.

There was one exception to our don’t-kill-humans-unless-you-have-to rule: Glorians. Whether they were Justiciars like I’d been, or Ardentors, Parevals, Arbiters or any of the rest, the way I saw it, you accept the supernatural blessings of the Lords Celestine, you take your lumps. The same was true of human wonderists who signed with the Aurorals or Infernals, although those who were still alive after the débacle with the Seven Brothers up in the Blastlands were pretty much keeping their heads down– which was why I was surprised at the enthusiasm when Aradeus and Galass returned from a scouting mission to a nearby settlement rumoured to have thrown their lot in with the Aurorals.

‘My Lady Galass was marvellous!’ Aradeus enthused as the two of them entered the room we’d rented above a roadside ale-house; luckily for us, the owner preferred to spend his nights at his lover’s cottage. The rat mage began removing a clever little totemist glamour from himself and Galass, grey-gloved hands weaving in the air as he shooed away the odd dust motes into which his spell had manifested. It hadn’t altered their appearances, just made it so that others would perceive them as utterly unremarkable, regardless of the situation.

‘It was nothing,’ Galass said, looking down at her feet and blushing.

‘ Nothing? ’ Aradeus turned to me. ‘Cade, she had a Glorian Pareval eating out of her hand, revealing secrets no amount of torture could ever have loosened from his tongue, all while the golden-garbed fool thought he was correcting her on theological discrepancies in the Auroral Edicts!’

‘What secrets?’ I asked.

Galass waited silently until Aradeus was done banishing his glamour. Despite his unimpeachably gallant nature, the proximity of anyone’s hands so close to her body tends to make her hair turn scarlet and stabby.

Once he’d finished, she sat on a cot and began, ‘The Lords Celestine are beginning to worry about a certain group of wonderists interfering with their war preparations.’

‘Damn right!’ Corrigan interrupted. His biggest problem with my strategy of making recruitment unprofitable for them had nothing to do with the likelihood of our deaths, just that no one would even notice our efforts. He pounded me on the back. ‘Told you it would work,’ he said, although he never had. Not once. ‘Soon, every Auroral and Infernal will be whispering our names, fearful of the day the Malevolent Seven will descend upon them and kick their arses off the Mortal realm once and for all.’

‘The Apocalypse Eight,’ Galass said.

Corrigan stopped thumping me on the back. ‘What?’

‘The Apocalypse Eight,’ she repeated. ‘Apparently, there’s another group of wonderists out there staging sneak attacks on hidden Auroral and Infernal spies and scouts, binding them up and dropping them on their enemies’ doorstep.’

Spy-hunters? I wondered silently. Every army has squads devoted to chasing down enemy scouts and rooting out spies, but unlike sabotage operations, this wasn’t something they farmed out to mercenaries.

‘The Aurorals and Infernals both believe this shadowy coven is working for the other side,’ Aradeus continued. ‘It’s causing quite a stir among their respective leaderships, who have been working hard to keep these unusual events secret. Cade, do you suppose our rebellion is inspiring other wonderists to take up the cause?’

‘Absolutely not!’ Corrigan thundered, figuratively and literally, indigo flames flickering up and down the braids of his beard. ‘First of all, “The Apocalypse Eight” is a stupid name. Second of all. . . well, that should be enough.’

‘Keep it together, would you?’ I told him.

Temper hopped over and patted Corrigan on the head before resting his muzzle on the big man’s shoulder.

‘You’re right,’ Corrigan said– although not to me. ‘I shouldn’t take these things so personally.’

Anyone referring to me as the ‘leader’ of this coven probably meant it ironically.

‘Any word on the attunements of this coven?’ I asked Galass and Aradeus. ‘Could the wonderist who took control of the angelic Valiant have been one of them trying to screw with us?’

Galass shook her head. ‘We didn’t get any specifics– not even descriptions of their appearance, except that they go around wearing uniforms, almost like some sort of military order.’

Temper growled.

Corrigan reached up and stroked the kangaroo’s ears. ‘It’s all right, my friend. She didn’t mean to hurt my feelings.’

I sighed to myself. I’m pretty sure one of my three dooms is going to involve being eaten by a vampire kangaroo because I didn’t let Corrigan buy us all matching uniforms.

I turned to Alice and Shame. Neither had spoken yet, which was usually because they didn’t much care about mundane matters like rival gangs of wonderists or where the next slaughter of their respective former allies would take place. They were staring at each other, and not with their usual animosity.

‘What is it?’ I asked.

They hesitated, both tried to speak at once, and finally, Alice gestured for Shame to go first.

‘The prophecies speak of a time called the Choosing Hour, when every soul must take a side before the war begins,’ Shame began. ‘However, within the Auroral hierarchy, there has always been an unspoken concern that the Lords Celestine are too eager to launch the Great Crusade.’

‘It is the same among the Infernals,’ Alice agreed. ‘Among us, this period is called the Setting of the Board.’

And you don’t start the game until every piece is in place. . . unless the players are too keen to get started.

‘So while we’re trying to keep the Aurorals and Infernals from completing their military and spiritual preparations, you think this other group of wonderists, this’– I glanced at Corrigan, who wasn’t looking at me, then caught Temper’s glare and continued more cautiously– ‘these irrelevant pricks who are in no way a proper coven and no doubt have very poor taste in attire. . . you think they might be trying to accelerate the war? Like some sort of doomsday cult?’

‘They’ve chosen to call themselves the “ Apocalypse Eight”,’ Alice said, ignoring the simultaneous glares from Corrigan and Temper. ‘If chaos is their intention, they have chosen a subtle yet effective strategy. Despite whatever injunctions the prophecies surrounding the Great Crusade might place on either side, if the Lords Devilish believe their opponents have already begun to fight in earnest, they may well declare war prematurely.’

You wouldn’t think of supposedly immortal beings as impulsive, but my experiences with the twelve Lords Celestine and, indirectly, the thirteen Lords Devilish through my interactions with a diabolic agent named Tenebris, who used to sell me Infernal spells, had taught me that both pantheons were prone to recklessness. I couldn’t help but recall how quickly the Angelic Valiants atop that gallows had lost their shit when their possessed comrade turned on them.

‘That Glorian Pareval who told you about captured Infernal spies and scouts being dumped on their doorstep,’ I began, turning to Aradeus and Galass. ‘ Which doorstep did the last ones turn up on?’

‘A secret prison,’ Galass said, frowning. ‘The Pareval wouldn’t — ’

‘That’s not possible, I interrupted. ‘The Auroral Edicts prohibit confinement as a punishment because the mortal realm is inherently corrupting to the spirit. When I was a Justiciar, if the verdict we rendered wasn’t execution or exile, the offender’s community was expected to enact retributions that nonetheless reintegrated them into society.’

‘That’s one of the things that had the Pareval so wound up,’ Galass continued, starting to pace the attic. ‘No one outside the upper echelons of the Auroral Hierarchy is even supposed to know this one’s been built, so how would this coven know to leave the captured spies there?’

A secret Auroral prison. . . A strange anxiety was creeping through me. It wasn’t just the abrogation of the supposedly unyielding legal principles I’d had drummed into me as a Justiciar, but that something was itching at the back of my skull, something I couldn’t yet put my finger on.

‘I don’t suppose either of you know the location?’ I asked.

‘Alas, no,’ Aradeus replied, then sparked one of his mischievous swashbuckler smiles. Reaching into the pocket of his long grey coat, he took out a sleepy-eyed rat. ‘However, mine is an innately collaborative form of magic, which can enable my noble little comrades to commune through the Totemic plane. Tell me, Brother Cade, have you ever heard of a prison without rats?’