The Brothers Cabal (6 page)

Even while part of Horst's mind was wondering what Debrett might make of that idiosyncratic use of titles, the rest of his attention was taken up by what greeted him within the room. The room was vast and high vaulted, certainly more likely to have once been an audience chamber for some ancient king given to grandiose gestures than anything as cosy as a dinner room. Feasts for hundreds of revellers that involved a lot of throwing chicken legs around and the harassment of serving staff, perhaps, but an intimate
tête-à-tête
, never.

Within the great echoing stone void of a hall, a dining table that would have looked impressive in almost any other setting stood a little beyond the centre of the room from the entrance, and aligned along its long axis towards it. Despite the bulk and grandeur of the table—some twenty-five feet in length—it was still like having a picnic blanket in the concourse of a major metropolitan railway station, the place of commuters taken by the staff who stood around, white towels over livery sleeves, even their practised
savoir faire
seeming insufficient for the setting. On the left-hand side of the table, a man and a woman stood talking, and they turned at the announcement to face the newcomers.

A servant appeared unbidden beside de Osma and his colleagues, and Horst was very nearly startled by the appearance of another at his own elbow. His senses far surpassed those he had enjoyed when merely mortal, and so he was not at all used to people sidling up to him undetected, demonstrating that a good butlers' school can teach stealth skills that would put the ninja of Japan to shame, as well as how to fold a napkin, starch a collar, and other abilities generally more useful to the world than throwing
shuriken
around.

He was conducted to the left side of the table, the woman being seated by another of the ubiquitous servants as he approached. As was his wont, honed over years of hot-blooded hormonal exhortation and still ingrained despite his changed nature, he cast an evaluative eye upon her as he approached. Her hair and eyes were dark, what he would have said was a Mediterranean type but for her deadly paleness. She was thin, too, and the suspicion of illness rose in his mind. He gauged her to be in her mid- to late twenties, though the simple black dress she wore would not have looked out of place on his grandmother, down to the choker and locket at her throat.

Belatedly, he shifted his attention to her companion, and discovered himself under at least as much attention from that quarter as he had lavished upon the woman. Horst's hackles rose; he immediately disliked this man, and not simply because he was smiling arrogantly at Horst, having caught him in the act of assessing his companion.

In Horst's earlier days when he had enjoyed such simple pastimes as routinely breathing and not bursting into flames in daylight, he had excelled in what he termed ‘seeking companionship' and what his parents had called ‘womanising', his mother with pursed lips, his father with a stern brow during the lecture and a wink at the end of it. He disliked the term himself; it sounded predatory when all he was doing was being friendly, usually very friendly, and frequently extraordinarily friendly. He liked women and, he was relieved to discover, they liked him.

In his joyous odyssey through the massed ranks of womanhood, he did, however, often happen across other men who fitted the epithet
womaniser
rather too well. They did not tend to be nice men, which was why Horst cavilled so strongly against the term being attached to himself. They used, often abused, and discarded. Rudeness was one thing—indeed, Horst excelled in applied rudeness when that application involved himself in limited engagements with an audience of one, occasionally two, and on a particularly memorable occasion, twelve (a women's lacrosse team had won a famous victory, the players were looking to celebrate, and Horst was looking lonely in the tavern where they discovered him. The progression of subsequent events seemed almost inevitable in hindsight). To repeat, rudeness was one thing, but these
womanisers
stooped to impoliteness, and that was unconscionable to Horst. These men broke hearts, and when they noticed at all, it made them laugh or, at the very least, smirk. It was a distinctive sort of smirk and one of the few things in the world that could move the usually equitable and equanimous Horst to feel murder flicker in his breast.

The man was smirking that very class of smirk, and Horst knew there and then they would never be friends.

The head of the table was occupied only by a high-backed chair, no more decorative than any of the other chairs, but its height gave it the air of a throne. Horst remembered the whispered references to the ‘Red Queen' and decided to ignore the chair until such time as it was occupied. On the tall chair's right hand sat the unknown man to whom Horst had developed such an easy and swift animosity. His clothes were expensive enough that the slovenly manner in which he wore them only served to add to his undeniable charisma by advertising his nonchalance. He was wearing a jacket of maroon velvet that Horst found himself coveting somewhat, a black waistcoat, a soft white linen shirt, and a black cravat. The cravat was partially untied and the shirt's top button undone. It was a statement of style that Horst had used many times in the past and it galled him to see this man using such similar devices. He became very aware of his own impeccable turnout and wondered at what point he had turned into his brother. He would have to study some periodicals and find out exactly what had been going on between the period of his second death and his second resurrection. News and events he would get to certainly, but he would turn to the fashion pages first.

As for the man himself, his lean and hungry look would leave Cassius seeming bloated and soporific. His face was well shaped and, it pained Horst enormously to admit to himself, undeniably handsome in a shallow, matinee-idol sort of way, should you happen to like that sort of thing. He wore his hair long, in a flowing mane of gentle waves that ran from a sharp widow's peak to comfortably below his collar. Horst, unused to envy, found words like ‘gigolo' and ‘widow-chaser' slithering around inside his head, hissing and dripping venom.

Fortunately, he didn't have to sit next to the man, for the pale woman sat between them. As the welcoming committee arranged themselves on the other side of the table, Horst noticed that the place to his right was also left empty. ‘Are we expecting anyone else?' he asked de Osma, who had taken the seat directly opposite to him.

‘Not quite yet,' said the Spaniard as he smoothed an errant raindrop into the cloth of his jacket's biceps. ‘When he has been recovered, he shall join us.' He looked up and straight into Horst's eyes, a brave or foolish thing for a mortal man to do. His expression was sleekly satisfied. ‘Just as you were.'

Horst looked down at his dinner setting while he considered his next words. Part of him noted that it seemed very simple in comparison with those of the other diners, but he did not give that so very much consideration. He looked up again and said, ‘And just who are we? Gentlemen, I am grateful for your efforts in bringing me here, but your reasons … what
are
your reasons?'

‘We shall dine first,' said de Osma. ‘Discussion can wait until afterwards.'

Horst glared at de Osma and he felt that strange and all-too-atavistic sensation flex within him again. It would be simplicity itself to transfix the irritating little human and make him …

Human.

Horst bit down his emotions with difficulty. He had always been an even-tempered man, a man to whom anger was a rare and unwelcome visitor. He didn't like the way that somehow it had gained a latchkey. He liked even less how he had started to take a shine to its visits.

And ‘human'? What had possessed him to think in such terms? Something flexed inside his heart again and he felt both fear and pleasure at its presence. So distracted was he that he hardly noticed the waiter—again—until the man was at his side, filling his wine glass.

‘No,' said Horst, angry at himself, angry at these men, confused, uncertain. ‘I do not drink … wine…?'

For now he saw it in his glass, red and opaque, and he smelled it, warm and tinged with iron.

His first impulse was one of disgust, yet even as he tried to find words to express it, his hand closed unbidden around the stem of the glass and it was rising towards his mouth. He was conscious of the eyes upon him, and closed his own that they might not see the fear there as his lips parted, his upper canines extending in a small smooth tensing of muscle that was a small ecstasy in itself, the tiny
tchink
as one grazed the brim of the glass, his slow inhalation that drew the scent into his mouth where it stained his tongue with need, and finally the slightest inclination to start the warm, fresh blood trickling into his mouth. For the first time in his life and his unlife, Horst Cabal was truly terrified, and it was of himself.

The glass was empty. Somehow it was empty. He opened his eyes and saw the redness thin against the glass, the drops pooling inside. It took a small effort not to lick them out. Instead he carefully placed it back on the table, rested his hands on the tablecloth, and looked at de Osma.

De Osma hardly noticed him; servants were fussing around, placing plates of food and restocking wine glasses with, in the cases of all the other diners, wine. Horst sat and glared, fighting down a tempest of violent emotion while these men who had raised him from dust and brought him here laughed and fluttered napkins and ignored him when he could have killed every one of them where they sat and before the supercilious smugness of their expressions had had time to fade. He felt like a bomb on the edge of detonation, a ferocious animal on a fraying leash. Didn't they know who he was? Didn't they know
what
he was?

‘No,' Horst said. The repressed violence sounded in his voice like the warning creaks of thin ice underfoot. ‘We will not discuss it later. We will discuss it now.'

The table grew suddenly quiet. Von Ziegler shot de Osma a nervous glance. For his part, de Osma seemed momentarily startled, but he guarded that moment well and looked at Horst seriously though with a small hint of reproachful acquiescence. ‘As you wish, my Lord Horst.'

‘Horst?' It was the man two places to Horst's left. He spoke with an English accent, the Thames Estuary evident in even that single syllable. ‘You're never called “Horst”, are you?' Then to the woman between them he said, ‘Once knew a German girl and her uncle was called that. She said it was an old man's name.'

Horst's head swung to face the man as smoothly and as threateningly as a gun turret. Their eyes met over the woman's head and, despite the violent animosity bubbling inside him, the man met his glance easily and arrogantly.

‘Who,' said Horst, the tight grip on his emotions making his voice toneless and mechanical, ‘the fuck are you?'

Where repressed violence charging the air so strongly it stank of psychic ozone had failed to make much of an impression on the man, a single expletive succeeded. The woman squeaked, but whether with outrage, amusement, or amused outrage, it was impossible to tell, although whatever it was, it caused her to drop her fork. The man—surprised first by Horst's words, and then by the sharp tinkle of silverware on china—quite lost his aura of sangfroid for a moment. When he recovered it, it was no longer pure; now it was streaked with wariness and hostility.

It was Collingwood who stepped in as peacemaker. ‘Gentlemen, please. We're all friends at this table, all with a common goal. Perhaps'—he looked to de Osma as he spoke—‘we should go along with my Lord Horst's suggestion that we, ah, fill him in on what this is all about.'

‘That would be lovely,' said Horst, forcing a smile onto his face. ‘Thanks.'

De Osma looked at his dinner, sighed, and put down his knife and fork, apparently not a man who could eat and talk business at the same time. ‘Very well. Perhaps you're right. We shall start with introductions. My Lord Horst, may I introduce you to my Lady Misericorde, Lady of the Risen, and my Lord Devlin, Lord of the Transfigured. My lord, my lady, Lord Horst, Lord of the Dead.'

‘The Risen?' Horst looked closely at Lady Misericorde. The paleness brought on by long hours away from the sun, the intense gaze of a driven personality and a keen intellect, the chemical burns on her fingers. It all seemed very familiar somehow. Then he understood, and almost laughed. ‘You're a necromancer.'

She frowned slightly at his tone. ‘I am, my lord. That amuses you?'

‘Not in itself, no. Just a coinci … Oh, it doesn't matter. I'm pleased to meet you,' he said, silently adding
I think
. He leaned over and looked at Devlin. ‘Transfigured. Meaning what?'

Predictably, Devlin took the opportunity to behave in a superior fashion. ‘What? You're saying you can't work it out?'

Horst wasn't entirely listening. He was looking at the enormous steak on Devlin's plate, and detecting a scent that was not entirely human. More canine, but somehow moderated. He made the obvious guess based on it. ‘You're either a lycanthrope, or you need to stop sleeping with dogs,' he said. ‘You stink of mutt.'

There was an awkward silence. Then Devlin laughed drily. ‘Right first time.' He returned his attention to his steak. ‘You were right the first time.'

Misericorde, who appeared to have been bracing herself for a confrontation, looked in some wonderment at Devlin, then at Horst with a slight smile albeit one still topped with a frown of curiosity. She returned to eating her own dinner of chicken and green vegetables.

If she was tacitly congratulating him on his muscular approach to diplomacy, Horst knew it was ill deserved. Devlin was not backing down; he was biding his time. Still, trouble piled up in the future may conceivably be avoided, a luxury unavailable when trouble is toe-to-toe and breathing heavily in one's face. He would deal with Devlin when the time arose, by which he meant he would avoid Devlin, or buy him a beer and let bygones be bygones, or perhaps simply tear his head from his shoulders and drink deep from the fountain of arterial blood rising from the fool's still-beating heart.