Chapter 11
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Blades are traditional, minimize vestige damage, and are good for cutting thread. Besides which, using guns would take us fast to lawlessness, tearing down the Enigma Covenant in the process. World’s not ready for that.
—Munitions clerk,
Newgate Prison, Modern Stratum
The Underworld was a metal venue located downstairs from the World’s End pub. The owner had a sense of irony, I guess.
As we got in line, I glanced down at Cassius’s sword, hanging from his hip, and gave it a tap. “I wonder what people are going to think that is. The veiled, I mean, because of this Enigma Covenant.”
Cassius looked around. “By the look of these other patrons, my guess would be a riding crop.”
I chuckled. “It’s not that kind of club.”
At the door, Bogdan, a heavyset Polish twentysomething, sat reading the score of a Wagner symphony. More symphonies were piled in his lap. He read them the way some people devour Stephen King or Lee Child.
“Jack, my man,” Bogdan said, looking up. “You were right, Wagner is amazing. Who’s your friend?”
“I am Cassius.” The centurion extended his hand.
Bogdan received a firm forearm shake. “Don’t get many of those,” he said, then turned back to me. “You need to play here again soon, man. I need to hear ‘They Always Go Away’ live.”
“Soon as I nail down the lyrics,” I told him.
He waved us by, and we started down into the venue.
Angra was playing—Brazilian act with a killer vocalist. I bobbed to the groove and let the music wash over me.
The tension of the past twenty-four hours started to fade.
We found a table near the back, where Cassius could mark the exits and keep an eye on the patrons, and we could hear each other speak.
Angra’s powerful music focused my mind. “What was that back there?” “It was an abduction attempt,” Cassius said.
“How do you know they weren’t trying to kill me?” I asked. “The woman was there last night just after Henry and I were shot. Maybe she came to finish the job.”
“Maybe,” he conceded. “But they did come with nets.” “The nets were iron, but seemed heavy even for that.”
“Iron robs a thanatist of his strength,” said Cassius. “Properly used, it can be as effective a weapon against thanaturgic beings as living flame, black blades, and well-tuned bows.”
“So, what kind of ‘thanaturgic being’ was that thing coming up the alley?”
“I do not possess a thanatist’s sight to discern such things, but if I were to guess .
. .” Cassius pressed his lips tightly together, his brow drawing into lines.
When he spoke again, I got the feeling he’d chosen not to speculate.
“But you can be sure the woman had come to take you alive, else she would not have stopped the creature.”
“Okay, but why abduct me, then?”
He looked me over. “I suspect your relationship to your friend has marked you. It is not uncommon for a thanatist to abduct another thanatist and exploit them to some advantage.” He paused for a moment.
“I have been a part of such details myself. It is a game of chess . . . though some of us are but pieces on the board.”
“Because vestiges exist only to serve, that it?” I leaned toward him. “I told you, man, you don’t owe me anything.”
The centurion lifted a hand and showed me his glowing bracelet.
“The binding is yours. And so long as I wear it, I will protect you. But you also need to understand that thanatists do not rush into battle. You are to direct and support and strategize. Please leave the sword-work to me. A well-meaning amateur is more a hindrance than a help.”
“I’m not exactly an amateur.” I didn’t want to get into that just now. “Besides, one against six is bad odds. And you may recall that I saved your ass yesterday.”
He held up a finger. “First, you need not resort to invective to express yourself.” He held up a second finger. “And second, it is also true that I saved your ass yesterday.”
We shared a quick laugh.
“In all seriousness,” said Cassius, “thanaturgic engagement rules stipulate that vestiges may not harm a thanatist if they are not directly engaged. However, once engaged, a vestige is within its rights to fight back. So, leave the close work to me. I have trained for this kind of thing for centuries.”
I pointed at the sword hanging on his hip. “Are you telling me the outfit is real?”
“The outfit,” he replied, “is the uniform given me when I joined Caesar’s Ninth Legion. The sword, though, is made of black iron, the best metal against any form of thanaturgy.”
Angra’s singer hit an insanely high note in their tune “Carry On.” I paused to listen before asking, “You fought for Caesar?”
“I was born in a small village in what you today call Belgium. My family belonged to the Atuatuci people.”
“Germanic tribe,” I said.
Cassius’s brows rose. “And part of Gaul. But few know this. Are you a historian?”
“I dig history,” I said, “but your accent helped.”
Cassius glanced at the doors. “All my people’s men served to defend our homes, our customs. Then, one day, we learned the Romans were coming.
We knew we had to make a stand; otherwise, all Gauls and Celts would bow to Rome.
So, my people gathered provisions and retreated to the citadel, but Caesar’s legions arrived with siege engines.
They killed four thousand before we surrendered.
The rest, more than fifty thousand, were sold into slavery. ”
Cassius turned to watch the band, but I could tell he was ruminating.
“I found a commander in the Ninth Legion,” he continued, “and convinced him I was of better use to the empire with my sword than as slave labor. I then bartered my oath of loyalty for the freedom of my parents, wife, and children, only to learn that a few days later they were all burned in our home while they slept . . . by the same commander who received that oath.”
His eyes focused again on me. “I was assigned to train gladiators for arena combat in Londinium. I drove slaves to fight and die to entertain the aristocracy.”
“You’ve been in London since the beginning? How’d you die?”
“I took the place of a slave in an unfair contest.” He held up a finger again. “One against ten.”
He and I were both guys who hated bad odds. “So, you wound up a semblance in the Strata.”
Cassius nodded. “A Shiguan thanatist gave me a powerful body, good home, then set me to work as a member of his personal guard, killing vestiges in battle against other thanatists.” He frowned and his eyes grew distant.
It was an amazing story, but something still wasn’t adding up for me. “If you were so valuable to him, how’d you wind up needing my help to reset your bindings?”
He didn’t say anything for several moments.
“After centuries of killing—and twenty-seven different binders—I had had enough. I decided I would either find a thanatist to assist in some new capacity, or I would let my bindings fail and slip into the Strata as a cipher—losing all memory did not seem such a bad fate for a man like me. Either way, I could not continue to be who I had become. So, I fled.”
The loud music filled the heavy silence that fell between us.
Cassius’s story sounded familiar. Not the specifics, but the idea of being trapped between two crappy choices, needing a way out and feeling powerless to find it.
I’d lived in that kind of prison for years—a life in my father’s street crew, or resented and abandoned in my parents’ home.
Torn between those choices, I’d done things I wasn’t proud of until I realized one important truth.
Fingering the hair ties on my left wrist, I said, “There’s a third option. ”
Cassius stared at me but said nothing.
“Look.” I guess I was going to get into it after all.
“I grew up in a gang family. Every day there were turf fights. People died. Friends died. My old man and my brothers pushed me to join. And I considered it, you know. Getting revenge, fighting back. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it.
Made home life a living hell. My mom hated it, too, and eventually took off. ”
“Your mother left you alone in this house of violence?” Cassius asked.
I took in the music for long moment. “Next day at the library, I stood there waiting for her to roll up in the old Dodge. She never liked me walking home through the neighborhood alone. I must have waited three hours before I remembered she was gone.” “I am sorry to hear this, Jack.”
“It was a long time ago. But I knew that, without Mom around, Dad would eventually kick me out if I didn’t join him and my brothers.
I was probably headed that way, if I’m honest. I certainly lost count of the fights I had just living in those streets.
So, until I get some thanaturgic catalysts and learn how to use them .
. . Well, I know how to fight, use a knife, guns, what have you.
But the more important thing is that before I got sucked into street life, I found metal. ”
Cassius looked over at Angra, slamming out some heavy rhythms, then back at me.
“I don’t mean just the music. I mean the people, too. They took me in. Made me feel connected, strong. It started in a moldy basement, of all places.” I could smell Chuey’s wet laundry even now. “And I felt it again the very first time I stepped foot in the Iron Horse.”
“Neutral ground,” Cassius said.
“It’s more than that. The people there”—I thought a moment—“they’ve got your back.”
Cassius seemed momentarily at a loss for words.
“Jack,” he finally said, “it is a beautiful thing, this community you describe. But you need to remember what has happened these last few hours. Someone shot you and your friend Henry. Clearly, it was planned. And whoever did it seems to want the Iron Horse, whose protections are receding, Henry hasn’t returned yet, and we don’t have enough swords to stand a real fight to save it.
Like my people’s small citadel against the Roman army, it will be crushed.
You need to accept either fighting a losing battle or be ready to capitulate . . . the way I did.”
I shook my head. “You can be who you were before, Cassius. Henry looked into the face of his shooter and told even him that, ‘There’s always a choice.’ So, no way, man, there’s always a third option. We just need to find yours.”
Cassius half smiled—he wasn’t really buying what I was selling.
Angra’s guitarist started the first few broken chords of their hit “Rebirth.” The fans pumped their fists, chanting in time with the music.
They were part of it. Something big and unstoppable.
That’s what I’d wanted to do, to be—someone who could write songs that made you feel like everything would somehow be okay. Songs that would last . . .
“Your face,” said Cassius, breaking the spell. “Something gets into your face when you are listening to this music. What is it?”
“Probably the dream I’ve been chasing most my life,” I said, though it seemed to be slipping away. I was thirty-three, no band, and still washing dishes.
Cassius listened, subtly nodding his head to the music. “I may not understand your metal music, but the chanting reminds me of our war cries. Beautiful and terrifying.”
“Back in the alley you shouted ‘Bratros.’ That your war cry?” “Indeed, Jack.”
“What’s it mean?” I asked.
Cassius’s eyes seemed to be seeing something I couldn’t. “Brothers,” he said.
Just then Maggie bustled up. Best waitress in Camden.
She had an encyclopedic memory for drinks, occasions, bands, faces.
She also believed in ice. I’d found ice rare outside the States.
She put two glasses of ice water down in front of us.
The other rarity tonight was that she was wearing a branded Underworld polo and name badge instead of her usual Judas Priest T-shirt.
“What’s with the getup?” I asked.
“Patty just sold the place. Big money. So”—she tugged at her shirt—“looking the part.” Then she leaned in close. “Did you hear about Angela DuFresne?”
I was about to ask who that was when I remembered she was the girl I’d talked up onstage the previous night at the Horse. “What?”
“Dead. Bobbies say she was attacked by some kind of animal. Thing trashed all her gear, too, except her guitar, apparently.”
“Holy . . .” I felt like the wind had just been sucked out of me. My fingers started trembling on the table. I lowered my hands and stuffed them under my thighs. I could still hear her music.
“When was this?” Cassius asked.
“Earlier tonight, outside the Fighting Cocks. She’d just finished playing a show there.” Maggie dabbed her eyes with a rag and slipped away from us to make her rounds.
Cassius and I sat and listened to the band for about five minutes after that, sipping water that tasted like it was straight from the Thames.
No way the attack on Angela was a coincidence; I just couldn’t figure out how it might fit.
Then I remembered the stone and pulled it out of my pocket. “Any idea what this is?”
Cassius shook his head.
I rolled it around in my palm. “I need to find the woman who gave me this. She handed it to me outside the Horse, just a couple of hours before Henry and I were shot. I think she might know who did it.”
Cassius gently touched the stone. “I know someone who can help.”
“Yeah, who’s that?”
“How long has it been since you attended church?”
That caught me off guard. I hadn’t been inside a church since my last prayer about Mama at St. Frances Cabrini when I was thirteen. Those prayers had never worked out, and I’d stayed away from any kind of chapel for twenty years.
But people were dying or missing, so if Cassius thought going back to church—just once—might help me figure out why, then maybe I could suck it up.
I took in one last scream from Angra’s singer, stood up from the table, then Cassius and I headed up the stairs out of the Underworld.