Ghosts, Gears, and Grimoires Read online

  They had been expecting such a welcome. Little else could be expected when traveling to Birmingham. Her Majesty’s forces had been planning the reclamation of the city for ten years now, since the first of the Rahab had emerged from the waves, invading the British Isles and, eventually, the entire surface world.

  Birmingham had been among the very first major centers to fall: its vast network of commercial canals had been a source of pride for the city, but had also been its most fatal flaw. The sea people had swum up those canals, gaining easy access to the town’s tender heart.

  Taking back Birmingham was a crucial step in winning back Britain—and the whole Empire, someday. The city itself might be lost, but through its corpse ran the rails that linked London with Liverpool, Spearhead of the Empire—the only major harbor to have escaped the Rahab onslaught. And, of course, with Manchester as well, the ghost city from which no convoy nor explorer had ever yet returned.

  One day, the red uniforms of the British Army would free the colossal, dreadful factories, march through the market district of the Bull Ring, and stand victorious before St. Martin’s Church. Everybody stoically believed that. Yet, with London still a living battlefield—Westminster Abbey in use as a headquarters for the sea people—there were indeed more pressing fights. The remnants of the British people were under no illusions about the years of war that still awaited them.

  Baylynn and Rupert weren’t here to free the city. The sea people weren’t even their target. They were in Birmingham on a very special, very peculiar mission.

  It also meant they were completely alone, surrounded by a horde of fish creatures whose highest collective purpose was the extermination of the entire human race.

  Two of them were now pouncing upon Rupert.

  He rolled away from the hedge, leaving the blunderbuss there. He drew his steam-gun from its holster, shooting one of the assaulting Rahab in the face. That was sheer luck: his shooting skills were nowhere near those of Miss Hayes. The next two bullets missed the other creature miserably. The sea monster was covered in blood and brains from his dead friend; now completely berserk, he ran at Rupert, his short spear gleaming before him.

  Nobody knew for sure, but it was said the ivory-white heads of those Rahab spears were made with the teeth of some shark-like creature from the very ocean floor. Judging from the spearhead’s size, Rupert calculated that such a beast would be about the size of St. Martin’s Church. He unsheathed his saber and fended off the spear, and then jumped to his feet and stabbed the monster, twice.

  More enemies were on their way to join the fight. It was as if the buildings and alleys themselves were generating a constant flow of monsters—slow, yet unstoppable. The door of a dilapidated pub burst open, and a dozen Rahab poured out of it.

  Rupert decided it was time to use the mini-gun.

  The war with the Rahab had drastically sped up the pace of scientific research, especially in the fields of weaponry and warfare. The new compact machine guns were a British Army favorite when it came to fighting an enemy that attacked in huge, seemingly endless waves. Some models, like the one Rupert was holding, were as portable as a rifle: six rotating barrels of death. The problem with machine guns—be they big or small—was, of course, that they jammed all the time.

  The Professor had found a solution to that problem. The thin disk of ammo Rupert kept on his left hip had been specifically designed by that most ingenious of inventors. It featured a long belt of bullets guaranteed not to jam the mini-gun. “Just give it a stroke and it’ll slay any bloke!” the Professor had personally assured Rupert.

  The agent now grabbed the end of the belt, and he fed it in the mini-gun. What the Professor had forgotten to mention was, to create such an unstoppable flow of bullets, he had had to make the weapon somewhat less manageable.

  The mini-gun immediately started erupting bullets, at first rather slowly, but quickly gaining speed. Rupert didn’t expect that.

  The first few rounds hit the ground at his feet, making him dance frantically as he tried to avoid shooting himself.

  “What are you doing, Sir Marris?” Baylynn asked, still firing at full speed. “Did you break the new mini-gun?”

  Rupert didn’t answer her. As the rate of fire increased, he finally managed to raise the barrels so as to direct the torrent of death at the incoming, raging Rahab. The results were frighteningly brutal. The mini-gun’s bullets cut through the enemy like a broadsword. Limbs flew everywhere, spurting black blood that stank of the ocean's floor. One of the monsters was decapitated by the weapon; another was cut in half.

  The weapon’s barrels spun faster and faster. Rupert felt the ammo-roll at his side getting lighter every second, as the bullets left it to spread mayhem among the creatures.

  The hell lasted one full minute. As soon as it stopped, a small red rock hit the church’s wall, only two feet from Rupert’s head.

  That flattered him, making him blush.

  Very little was known about the Rahab’s moral codes. One thing had been established though: the monsters preferred close-quarter combat. Fighting from a distance was an abomination to them, something they regarded with repulsion and disgust.

  They probably hated humans all the more for their guns and cannons. The sea people only allowed for exceptions to this moral rule when the enemy they faced was deemed especially strong. In those rare cases, they fought with small catapults, or slingshots, such as the one that had fired at Rupert.

  They think I’m stronger than they!

  At the same time, he couldn’t help but realize he had done very little to stop the Rahab assault. Far from it, the infernal noise of the mini-gun had probably spread news of the fight to every monster in Birmingham.

  Miss Hayes had the same thought at the same instant: she got up, put her left pistol away, and grabbed her sniper rifle.

  “We’re pulling back!” she announced.

  Rupert discarded the empty ammo disk, and put the mini-gun away in its holster on his back. “Where to?” he asked, as he followed Baylynn around St. Martin’s, headed for its main doors.

  “Inside,” she answered. She was running like mad, but she still hadn’t stopped firing the gun in her right hand.

  “Oh.”

  The target of their mission dwelt inside that church. To escape the monsters’ claws, they were jumping right into the lion’s jaws.

  “Better than getting caught by them,” Baylynn read his mind, still running.

  That was true. The most hideous tales circulated about what happened to Rahab prisoners. Nobody was really sure whether the monsters actually did eat human flesh, but the great white sharks they kept as pets and mounts enjoyed it a lot.

  Baylynn and Rupert reached the church’s main doors and froze.

  Someone had impaled two Rahab, one on each side of the tall wooden doors. The limbs of the corpses were outstretched, forming hideous Xs covered in flies. Humans couldn’t really read Rahab facial expressions well, but it was clear agony and terror had dominated the monsters’ final minutes. Both corpses were slit vertically from throat to belly; what was left of their colorful intestines hung from them like sapless creepers.

  Trying to ignore the terrible stench, Baylynn and Rupert ran to the doors, pushing them open simultaneously. Then Baylynn turned, ready to empty her gun into their pursuers, but held her fire instead.

  Something weird was happening.

  There were at least twenty Rahab before them, and more were slowly approaching. One creature held a large slingshot at the ready, but didn’t fire. No one moved a muscle.

  The Rahab all kept at least twenty feet away. Their eyes focused on the two humans, but also darted glances at their impaled brothers every few seconds. The mass of monsters was afraid of something. Something that waited behind those wooden doors.

  One of them snapped its jaws noisily; another did the same, and then all of them repeated the gesture. With one last look of hatred—and of cruel scorn, perhaps—they turned and walked away from the t
wo agents.

  “Well, I’ll be damned... Why did they pull back?” Rupert wondered.

  Then he heard a thunderous boom, very close to his right ear. Miss Hayes had had time to chamber three more rounds into her sniper rifle. She quickly fired all three at the mass of retreating monsters, who ran away leaving three more dead on the ground. Then she vented the steam from the gun with a sharp whistle.

  “Don’t you dare turn your back on me,” she muttered, offended by her enemies’ actions. “Don’t you know who I am?”

  * * *

  They listened carefully for any noise coming from within St. Martin's, and decided the building was either empty, or those inside were lying in ambush. Treading lightly, they walked past the threshold.

  The church smelt powerfully of sea water. Someone had cleaned it recently, but the Rahab had obviously used it as a barracks of some sort.

  What kind of force could push a troop of Rahab out of their base in the middle of dead Birmingham?

  “Well, nobody’s shooting at us,” Rupert said. “That’s what I call a promising beginning.”

  “You know what makes you a precious ally, Marris?” Baylynn whispered.

  As they walked down the nave, the only sound besides their hushed voices was the rustling of her gown against the floor.

  “My bravery and good looks?”

  “Your remarkable powers of observation.”

  She grabbed his left hand. She was a real lady, but the thrill of action always made her a bit brusque, besides turning her into an unstoppable war machine.

  She was examining the red mark of a burn on the palm of his hand. “What did you do?”.

  “Oh, it’s nothing really, it doesn’t hurt much...”

  Her head was bent over his hand, and he could look at her delightful blonde hair. She wore it in a chignon that day, so it wouldn’t bother her during fights. A couple of stray wisps had escaped the coiffure.

  “I think I touched the mini-gun’s barrels while I was using it.”

  Baylynn Hayes has the most delightful ears…

  She looked up at him, her expression mildly annoyed, and sighed. Then she fished around in one of her battle-gown’s pockets. She’d designed the outfit herself: topped by a loose velvet corset, it hid her legs behind a bell-shaped veil of black cloth and white lace. The skirt was slit vertically down the front, so as not to hinder her when she ran, but Rupert had to be very careful any time he tried to catch a glimpse of her slender legs through that opening. She got very angry at anyone she caught staring.

  Anything and everything could come out of Miss Hayes’ battle-gown, from food supplies to weaponry; extra ammunition to portable lighters. She was now holding a flat round jar, whose lid she quickly unscrewed. She used two fingers to scoop a bit of the thick gray cream inside, then proceeded to spread it on Rupert’s wound. Brusque as she could be, Rupert noticed her hands were still soft as petals.

  A vast tenderness filled his chest.

  “You shouldn’t touch machine gun barrels,” she scolded him. “They’re hot. They’ll burn you. Burning hurts.” A sudden rush of adrenaline dilated her pupils as she whirled.

  Rupert had drawn his gun, and was shooting at someone behind her back.

  A figure had emerged from behind the old altar at the end of the nave—a bald man holding a gun, and firing at them. Rupert pushed Baylynn behind a pew; she ducked and moved away from the central corridor.

  The man’s bullet pierced a hole in the church’s wooden door. Only a steam-powered gun could fire so powerful a shot.

  Heavy stuff, Rupert thought, as he tried to find their assailant, who had disappeared.

  The man stepped from behind one of the big round pillars supporting the church’s roof and aimed at Rupert, but now Rupert got his chance too. Neither of them was a true sniper, however, nor were their weapons particularly accurate in less-than-masterful hands. They both missed.

  Rupert ducked behind an old worn pew, then realized its rotten wood would offer no protection against steam-powered bullets, and rolled away. Another round tore into the pew.

  The next shot hit the wall, raising a small cloud of dust.

  Then the man screamed in pain. Rupert smiled, put his gun away, and got up to enjoy the show.

  Baylynn had managed to catch the shooter from behind, her saber drawn. She’d cut his right wrist obliquely, spoiling his last shot and sending his gun to the other end of the nave. The man started to mutter a curse word, but she prevented that by clipping him on the temple with the hilt of her sword.

  That remarkable piece of weaponry came from her ancestral home across the Irish sea. The blade glimmered like silver, as she always took perfect care of it. The guard was covered by a big triskelion, the Celtic threefold symbol. Rupert had once tried to lift the weapon and wield it in training, but he’d barely been able to hold it, weirdly top-heavy as it seemed. Yet Baylynn waved it around as lightly and easily as if it were a fork.

  Using the heavy guard, she punched the man on the nose, sending him sprawling to the floor. He hit the back of his head against the hard tiles. Baylynn nailed him there by putting a black varnished boot firmly on his belly, a few inches away from his most delicate weak spot.

  Rupert moved to her side.

  “Well, hello to you, sir,” he said, “and who would you be?”

  Baylynn answered for the defeated man by slicing open the front of his shirt with her saber, exposing his pale chest. She scratched his skin quite badly in the process, but didn’t apologize for it.

  The tattoo of a large black cross could be seen on the man’s chest.

  “A little Crusader boy, are we?” she asked sarcastically.

  The man glared at them with nothing but hatred in his eyes.

  Despite what their name and symbolism suggest, the Crusaders weren’t a religious cult. Perhaps they had originally been so: people who saw the rising of the Rahab and the resulting war as the apocalypse the Bible talked about—the last battle between good and evil.

  In the years following the fall of Westminster, however, they had rapidly grown in number, forgetting the source of their name at the same time. Criminals, rejects, rebels, and sociopaths—everyone who had hated the old society could now keep hating it among the Crusaders’ ranks. Hiding behind the pretense of being humankind’s last line of resistance, they ignored laws and regulations, often raiding the Crown’s supply sources, and harassing British civilians.

  “You shites,” the man spat at them. “You just made the mistake of your lives. You picked the wrong day to come here.”

  Baylynn’s booted heel pressed him harder against the floor, just to remind him who was boss.

  “Who told you about us? It was the whore, wasn’t it?”

  It had indeed been a woman. She had come to the free city of Northampton one week before. Apparently, she’d escaped from a Crusader den in Birmingham. She’d told the local authorities about the terrible things her former friends were doing there. The news had quickly reached London, and the Crown had sent Hayes and Marris to investigate.

  “That’s none of your business,” Rupert answered him roughly. “Where are your little friends? I don’t see any more scum in here.”

  The man chuckled. “There’s no one left. They’re all gone. And you’ll be too, soon enough.”

  “No more nonsense!” Rupert shouted. “Where are your supplies, you cur?”

  Baylynn sighed, annoyed with the both of them. “If you’re still here, it means there is something to find in this place. Where are the others? We don’t wish to kill you. We want to know what’s going on here.”

  The man’s eyes narrowed into slits. He stared at Baylynn, either weighing her words or dreaming about revenge.

  Behind the almost-closed eyelids, she saw his pupils dart involuntarily toward the altar. Glancing that way, she noticed some tiles had been removed from the floor just below a beautifully-colored window. The top of an iron ladder emerged from a hole there.

  “The old
queen must be really desperate,” the man sneered, “if she’s started employing you people, you Irish scu—” That definitely won him a kick in the balls.

  Rupert knelt to keep the man still as Miss Hayes fished a length of cord out of her ever-useful battle-gown and tied his wrists and ankles. His heart swelled with professional admiration, and with unrequited love. Twice he’d asked Baylynn to marry him, and twice she’d said no; patting his hand the first time, laughing at him the second one.

  “With all that’s happening to the world these days, you’re against us,” the man muttered, indignantly biting off every word. He appeared to be in great pain. “It’s a bloody shame we have to keep killing each other.”

  Baylynn pulled at the ends of the knot she’d tied. The cord bit into the man’s wrists. “Why do you think I haven’t killed you yet?” she murmured into his ear. “Because I can’t?” She gave a wicked chuckle.

  That silenced him.

  Rupert and Baylynn moved to examine the hole.

  “Underground,” she muttered. “Why must they always hide underground?”

  The ladder disappeared down a narrow well behind the altar. A paved corridor could be seen at its bottom. There was light down there, bluish electric light.

  They gagged the man with a piece of his own torn shirt, though he continued to express his discontent with loud angry groans.

  Baylynn sighed, brushing a wisp of stray hair away from her eyes, and proceeded to unbutton her gown. The garment would hinder her descent down the ladder. Quick and determined, she worked on the hooks cinching the corset until she managed to open it, revealing a white long-sleeved blouse. Then she dropped the gown to the floor.

  Her outfit was now definitely more minimal. Her slender legs were covered to the knee by long white socks, rising out of her varnished boots. There were a few inches of bare white thigh, and then the hem of a short, vaporous skirt, black and white as the gown that had covered it.

  It wasn’t the most chaste of garments, but she found trousers unbearably uncomfortable. The sight definitely silenced the complaining man.