Chương 25: A tail

The warlocks are used to taking their bathroom breaks without a bathroom at this point (and Peat Moss never learned). Despite the complaints of their hostages, they avoid civilization once they've secured their pilgrimage papers. These will let them avoid much of the trouble they'd face as undocumented travelers, but they still don't have a clear answer on how Jordan and Tilliam ought to avoid attention, and every checkpoint remains a nail-biter even with "Abraham" at the wheel.

Adaire was the perfect giggly, blushing fiancee, in a way that made both Caspar and I somewhat uncomfortable. She cheerfully bulldozed every question and bump on the road in the licensing station, dizzying the clerk with flattening flattery; he stamped their forms within minutes. I have to admit: the speed with which she skidded back into teary hostage impressed even me. So galled are her protests at having to rough it in order to pee that Caspar doubts she's faking. It's chilly in the Pastornos diocese.

They see their breath when they leave the van and hike into the woods. They take these trips in shifts; Caspar escorts Tilliam and Jordan brings Adaire. Peat Moss hops out and ambles into the woods. Doing deer things, I guess. Caspar generally returns first with Paul Tilliam. The first few stops, they sit in silence, just looking at anything but one another. This time, he scrutinizes the archbishop, shivering in the dawn in grubby secondhands.

Outside of that silk robe, he looks even more worn and small than he did on the airship.

"You met me." Caspar surprises himself with his own words.

"Don't think you'd remember." Tilliam glances up.

"I did?"

"I was a Cartwright kid."

"Cartwright. Cartwright." Tilliam whistles through his front teeth.

"That's a seminary, yes?"

"Yessir. I was about ten. You were still just a bishop, on the campaign trail. Had that big hot rod up on stage with you all the time." Caspar loved that car. That red coupe.

"Ah, yes. One of the restoration rodeos. Quite the hootenannies, eh?"

"Uh huh. Stuffed on funnel cakes, dancing to the worship swing. And then you stepped out with your new wife. You'd just married Rebecca." Caspar watches the stormcloud roll in across Tilliam's face.

"You told us about hunger. How it was the Father telling us to strive for Him. How it would make us better." Tilliam closes off.

"I see where you're steering this."

"This is for me, not for you. Ain't gonna pretend like I have anything to say you'd care to hear. The wife and the car and the airship and the mistress, and I was ten years old sewing soles onto fancy shoes to earn a twin bed and a scoop of mashed potatoes. Only thing to my name was my father's old service suit and a copy of the Precepts. And you." He scratches his stubble pensively.

"You smiled and it made me smile, too. So I suppose you have my gratitude for that." Tilliam's eyes turn from him, back out the window.

"Hunger didn't make me better," Caspar says, "and it didn't make me pious. It just made me hungry." This detaches Tilliam's view from the pasture.

"You think to lecture me? Servant of the Adversary? With the blood of dozens of your brothers and sisters on your hands." He sneers.

"No, goodman. Hunger didn't make you better at all. You need space in your heart for that. Space for the Father." Those words don't touch Caspar. This man can't touch him anymore. The woman he loves ate the Father.

"Oh, well," he says.

"Guess I'm damned, huh?"

"You make light of it," Tilliam says.

"I wonder how you'll feel when the Adversary takes your soul from you." This gets a chuckle to escape from Caspar before he can bite it back.

"Y'know, archbishop," he says, "I think you'd be surprised, how it feels." Tilliam's face darkens further. Peat Moss taps a hoof against the side of the van. Caspar slides the door and lets him back in. The fawn gets a load of Tilliam's scowl.

"What were you guys talking about?" Caspar buckles him into his seat.

"Tell you when you're older, Peat." Back on the road and Jordan drums on the wheel to the Wayback Playback on Ninety-Six Nine. They're scorching through a block of Crispford Brothers Band. Caspar's sister-in-arms is hooting and singing through the old singles, and booing every cut from the new album.

"Play the damn hits, man," she says.

"I thought you were faking," Caspar says.

"First time we drove together. Like you were just pretending to love the music to get me on your side."

"I don't pretend about rock and roll, brother," Jordan says. The distorted lead of Never Far From Him crackle through the speaker and Jordan delightedly turns the volume up.

"Ohhhh shit." She croons wordlessly along to the guitar's bendy riff.

"You know this is about the God you have turned from, right?" Tilliam calls.

"This music isn't for you."" Blow it out-your-ass," Jordan sings over the choppy syncopation.

"This is music?" Peat Moss is tapping his hoof on Caspar's seat in time.

"This is nice. This existence shit is okay." They break into the meadowlands by the afternoon. The mist has evaporated, and the views roll forth like a pastoralist's brush strokes. Caspar feels his spirit expanding to take up all that space. He looks over at Jordan, about to point out a pasture full of horses, and sees the faraway consternation on her face. He leans across the divider.

"What's going on, Jordy?"

"Got a hunch," she murmurs. She scans the wide highway and jerks the wheel to an exit lane.

"We're going to, uh—" She squints.

"Warhanai-on-Firanzi." The rush of wind lessens as they turn off the thoroughfare. Their wheels make a chunky dismount from the smooth paving of the highway onto cobblestone.

"Why are we going this way?" Tilliam calls.

"No talking," Jordan says. She coasts through a ribbon of countryside, and turns left onto a boutique-lined main street, rolling to a halt behind an honest-to-god horse-drawn buggy. She scans the upcoming street and eases righthand around the carriage. Peat Moss makes gawking eye contact with a dun draft horse. They cruise past a garlanded intersection and take another left down a tidy row of townhouses. Jordan hums under her breath as the van complains its way up a cobbled hill.

"Cas." She angles the rearview.

"Blue sedan. Use the mirror, don't turn around." Caspar locates it, two cars behind them. One of those odd oblong Pastornos plates. The driver's an indistinct silhouette behind a cozy hamlet reflection. His lips press together.

"Tail?"

"Uh huh." She flicks her turn signal on. Another left.

"We need an alibi. When we get back to the shops, hop out and buy something." Caspar nods.

"Drop me by the cafe. You want anything?"

"Iced brownleaf," Jordan says.

"And a grenade launcher if they've got it." Caspar slides from the van in front of the cafe and waves a greeting to the bushy-browed silver-haired fellow at the counter. He returns it with a yellowy smile. There's something you only see in the old country. A teakeeper past entry-level job age who doesn't hate his life.

"Chamchek fellow, eh?" The teakeeper scoops ice into a tall styrofoam cup.

"Here on pilgrimage, aye?"

"Yessir." Caspar adds a touch of new world twang to crack a smile on the teakeeper's face.

"Ask you something, sir?"

"Of course, lad."

"Well we're, uh, we're Pastoralists. It's an Eastern Diocese creed. You know the Pastoralism sects?" The teakeeper strokes his chin.

"Have a nephew, he married into one. Flower crowns and bonfires and such, aye?"

"Yessir. Exactly. And I'm wondering, my pilgrimage and I, we're hoping to get a bonfire going tonight. What with it being a worship friday. Only problem is, y'know, we want to be far enough from any occupied real estate that nobody sees the fire, gets touchy, we end up apologizing to a village bucket brigade… you see what I mean?"

"Sure. Sure."

"So I'm hoping, sir, us being strangers to these parts, and all these settlements every which way—it sure is pretty, sir, and so many folks around compared to Chamchek." The teakeeper tuts sympathetically at Caspar's yokel routine.

"I'm hoping you might point me the way to somewhere… remote. Nobody about that we might bother."

"You have a map, boyo? Caspar hands over a trifold tourist map and the teakeeper clicks his tongue as he marks a path with a ballpoint.

"There, now. Just up West Grish and you're in the backmeadows. This far out of harvest, you'll have all the room you need." He thanks the teakeeper with all the hayseed aw shucks energy he can muster, and hustles back to the van with a cardboard cupholder full of tea, plus a flaky matcha puff that he rests on the floor for Peat Moss. If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it. The fawn sniffs it.

"What's this?"

"Pastry," Caspar says.

"You looking for a reason to exist, give that one a try." He passes Jordan the brownleaf and unfolds the map across the dashboard.

"North on the blu-way. Local guy says there's no one around." Tilliam frowns with alarm as Jordan hits the gas.

"Middle of nowhere? Why?"

"Killing some people, archbishop." Caspar leans into the back row.

"Seatbelts, everyone." Adaire whimpers pitifully as she clicks her buckle in.

"Holy shit." Peat Moss talks around the matcha puff in his maw.

"I shoulda named myself Pastry." ₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪ The sunset is turning the world the colors of blood and gold as the warlocks pass the tooth-achingly cozy hamlet of West Grishani and coast past the hedgerows into its meadowlands. The old teakeeper steered them right—the gothic masonry of West Grish's steeple vanishing into the middle distance is the last visible marker of civilization. That and the blue sedan. Caspar nudges Jordan's hand on the scuzzy plastic gearshift.

"They're slowing down. Putting some distance." Jordan chews her lip.

"Reckon they're suspicious. We speed up, we slow down, we stop, we do just about anything, I think it's begun." Caspar kneads his thumbs into his own shoulders and neck, loosening his tension and heating his muscles. When it comes to the dispensation of violence, he's chosen deference to Jordan Darius. He lacks her decisive amorality.

"What's our move?"

"Gotta tell you, brother." Jordan jerks a thumb back.

"I think our move's in the loading bay." Caspar unbuckles his seatbelt and taps Jordan's arm. She scoots it out of the way to give him passage into the back seat.

"Down," he commands, and Tilliam curls nervously forward. He clambers over the seat cushions and into the ass-end of the van. That's where they've put the guns. Tilliam whimpers when he hears the clanking catch of the Saur auto in Caspar's grip.

"Need we resort so swiftly to violence?" Jordan snorts.

"What's we? You want a peashooter, Archie?" Caspar climbs back into the back row, and snaps earmuffs over the heads of the cuffed hostages and the hooved Peat Moss.

"Whoa," Peat says. He makes a little braying noise.

"My voice is, like, on the inside."

"Proper earpro before you shoot a gun, kid. Always." Caspar pats his flank.

"Your call, Jordy. Am I shooting the air, the tires, or the people?"

"Can't risk hurting the innocent," Jordan says.

"The air and the tires didn't lift a finger against us." Caspar gives this a rueful laugh. He rests the Saur on the cushions, sets his jaw, and opens fire. Sound, smoke, flame, and flying brass. The rear window of the van becomes a puckering, punctured spiderweb. Through its mess, their pursuers' ride twists and squeals. Caspar holds the trigger until the gun clicks. Jordan jerks the wheel to one side. Wolf's-head armor flows across her face.

"No witnesses." She pulls her. 45 from her shoulder holster.

"Nobody lives, Cas."

"Nobody lives," Caspar echoes, and shunts the empty magazine from his Saur. He clacks another into the receiver as he knees the passenger door open. My warlock no longer hesitates. These people have to die for his mission to succeed and his mistress to ascend, so he's going to kill them. He has the same dutiful armor around his heart I sensed in Jordan Darius. His fear of the changes I'm inflicting on him is gone. So is my nebulous guilt at them. Hesitation has fled us. We're fixed in each other's souls.

Caspar still loves humanity. So do I. I promise. But we love each other more now. The sedan doors flip outward; from the passenger side, a black-clad figure racks a thick steel shotgun, shattering the window with the butt of the thing and taking aim. The exit from the opposite side is much less tactical. The driver doesn't so much spring as flop, rolling into the dirt. A smear of blood across the handle tells Caspar he's been hit. Jordan leans out her side of the van and her.

45 roars, sending half a magazine toward the standing passenger with the shotgun. A bullet that should have punctured his heart sparks and kicks off instead. Another punches through his arm, blowing a chunk from his elbow and hanging it useless at his side, but Caspar can already see the tissue reforming.

"Warlocks," he calls, between bursts from his Saur.

"No shit." Jordan ducks back into the van to reload.

"Can you—" A whumph as the shotgun tears through the driver-side mirror and embeds shrapnel into her chest. She hisses in angry pain and vents it from her, piecing the ragged flesh back together.

"Close in," she cries.

"I'll cover you."

"What do I do?" Peat Moss has kneaded his earmuffs off.

"Stay down." Caspar tosses her the Saur; she catches it one-handed and blindfires a torrent curtain of lead from behind cover. He sprints from the van, taking a wide circle to avoid Jordan's suppressive fire as my armor sprouts from his limbs. His target is curled behind the passenger door while he racks a steaming shell from his scattergun, his own chitin plate rippling into form. He sees Caspar coming and scrambles backward into the vehicle. An errant fistful of shot whips past Caspar's head.

Caspar reaches the door and scythes it from the car with a claw, seizing the fleeing warlock by the ankle. A punctuating crash as the next shotgun blast takes him full in the chest, but at this point his armor's solidified, and what would have ventilated him instead ablates chips of chitin from his breastplate and knocks him breathless. But his grip stays firm, and he tugs his quarry out of the car with him, bringing them both down to the ground. From the back of the sedan lunges a third man.

The car rocks on its shocks as he emerges. Full plate, red as blood. Is that an Alexandra warlock? I ball my hands into fists. Alex, what the fuck are you doing? Are you teaming up with Eight? How is that even possible, and she hasn't just eaten and/or exploded you, girl? It's time I tracked my second-youngest sister down. She needs to get with the new paradigm. Caspar wheels in the dust, clenching his legs and forcing the gunman between himself and the red warlock.

He rakes and struggles, trying to fit his claw into the close space between him and his immediate threat. A bubbling grunt from the warlock in his grip and Caspar jolts to one side as acid hisses and spatters. He aims to spear through the gap in the helmet that the spell ate open, but the claw's just too long to work as a close-up stabbing tool against a chitin-coated opponent. I didn't count on Caspar having to kill so many warlocks. I need to redesign this spell.

A vicious sabaton'd kick to Caspar's side from Alexandra's warlock sends him skidding and loosens his grip on his foe. The gunman gets up into a crouching mount and starts driving mailed fists toward his face. Caspar draws his arms into a desperate guard, grunting as a hammer blow fractures his ulna. He scrabbles his legs across the ground. He has to get purchase before the red warlock can reach him. A rending scream and suddenly the pressure is off Caspar.

He bridges from the ground back onto his knees to see the gunman clawing at his chest, which is fizzing and softening. Something's pushing and squirming. Caspar's eyes bug. A fucking swampland cattail is growing out of the dude's sternum. Saoirse's magic. That's acid spit from Peat Moss. A fuzzy missile blur connects with the red warlock's crotch. The fawn has galloped full-speed from the van; his velvety little head is encased in an ugly lumpen battering ram of a helmet crowned by two curling horns.

Caspar brings his claw slicing downward, puncturing the acidified gap Peat Moss's breath left in the gunman's breastplate. The sternum smashes like porcelain under his force and fragments into the shotgunner's lungs. He drowns in his blood as my warlock rises to his feet. Red is wheezing and leaning against the sedan. Peat Moss bounds off the roof and connects another cracking headbutt into the dude's chest, sending him tumbling through the passenger door with such force that it's bounced from its hinges.

The driver, who's gotten back to a knee, shoots across the hood of the car and drills a bullet into Peat Moss's stomach. The fawn sprawls out and thrashes on the ground. Caspar lunges in front of Peat as the driver empties his pistol. Most of the bullets flatten and ping off his armor, but one finds a gap on his hip and smashes his pelvis." Jordy," Caspar roars, as he courses my magic into his wound. An answering thunderstorm.

Freed from her fears of friendly fire by Caspar's fall, Jordan barrages the sedan in full auto. Metal pings and glass showers. The wounded driver takes a burst to the skull; the system strain must be too much for him, because his helmet flakes and breaks, and his mind mushrooms outward from his ear. My spiracles flicker as I pour power into my warlock's hip. The tendons re-tie; the bone chips shiver through the raw flesh and solidify, like a rewinding tape.

Caspar launches from the ground and rushes the red warlock, who kips up to his feet to receive him. They clash in a scraping, sparking flurry of claws. Caspar's automatic urge is to take the fight to the ground, but Red's got one of those punch-gauntlet things, and Caspar has a grim memory of the mismatched moment in the Chamchek intersection. His long, slicing claw disadvantages him. I know, Cas. I'm sorry. I'm working on it.

He checks the next charge the red warlock makes, blocking a kick aimed at his healing hip, and twists the two of them round into another standing exchange. Caspar quests for distance in order to give Jordan a shot, but Red is on him. Peat is whimpering as he tries to evoke his stomach shut. Caspar searches for advantage, for anything that he can use to finish this. The next lunge he parries, he gets it. There's a hesitation in the red warlock. An unwillingness. This guy is new. Of course he is.

Caspar killed his predecessor. He's new to hurting and healing. He's still fighting to conserve himself. He isn't used to pain. Caspar throws himself into a heedless, head-lowered charge. The blade comes up to halt him and it doesn't. He impales himself. Red's punching dagger slides through an articulating crack in his armor and spears him right in the stomach. He roars defiance through the agony, and slices the man's forearm off, right at the elbow joint.

The arm stays skewered in him, shoved all the way through; he can feel the point scrape against the back side of his breastplate. The freshly one-armed fighter howls and clamps his remaining hand over the stump as dark blood geysers from it. Caspar closes his gauntlet onto the man's head, jerks him into a forward bend, and rams a claw down into the crack between helmet and gorget.

Alexandra's warlock thrashes like a landed fish, and then slides slowly off Caspar's claw, a broken marionette of melting chitin and cooling meat.

"Son of a bitch," Caspar snarls, and yanks the arm out of his stomach on the bitch. He sits heavily on the ground next to Peat Moss. They recline together as Saoirse and I repair them. Caspar lands a heavy hand on Peat's head. The helmet liquefies and slides from it.

"Good boy, Peat. You've got it. You did great back there."

"It hurts," Peat Moss gasps.

"Caspar, it fucking hurts."

"I know." Caspar rubs a fuzzy ear.

"Let your mistress fix it. She'll fix it. There now, see?" He reaches down and plucks the bullet from the ground where Peat's evocation spat it from his flesh.

"Just a teeny tiny thing. It's out. And you're better."

"That was the worst thing ever. What the fuck." Peat Moss exhales raggedly as he gets back to his feet (hooves?).

"This existence shit is awful."

"Sometimes." Caspar scratches his chin.

"It's also everything else." He feels the fawn warlock tremble.

"What does that mean?" Caspar hums.

"You weren't born knowing about ice cream, were you?"

"No." Peat Moss blinks tears from his prey-animal eyes.

"What's that?"

"Next town we're in, I'll show you. Think it'll help." ₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪ I slip through Heaven, twirling past spires and shooting through canyons, pursuing the falling-star souls of the dead warlocks. I watch them fork apart, Alexandra's soul sluicing to her far-off demesne. She, I can talk to later. I don't bother chasing her people. I'm chasing the other two. I chase too far. A distant shape like a planet of teeth. Two tiny lights disappear into its abyssal depths. Two souls, made oblivion in one titanic swallow.

Its serrated mouth yawns open, each fang the size of a basilica. It's grown even larger than I remembered. Massive. Ten times my size, easily. In a seal breaking voice, a trumpet-of-doom voice, it calls to me, and the word cracks the foundations of Heaven, dozens of miles in every direction, racking and splintering the undead flesh of its suffering denizens. One word: Sister.

I flee without hesitation, my tentacles whirling to slice my path through the pollution, firing off clouds of chaffing scout forms and darting through the visible spectra into dazzle-camouflage multidimensionality. Mine is a thing beyond dread, felt by my entire prime form. An emotion without a human equivalent—but it doesn't matter. My retreat is as desperate as yours would be. She doesn't pursue. But I feel her many eyes. I feel her love for me. Alien and monstrous, but as strong as it's ever been.

I return it, on a nimbus of blackened sorrow. Oh, Eight. What are we going to do about you? Beloved sister. Hated enemy. Dreaded apocalypse. She's seen us. She knows us. In Pastornos, she awaits us.