Chris Holm - The Wrong Goodbye

“What is all this?” I muttered.

“Folklore, mostly. Tales transcribed centuries ago from the oral tradition. Or, more accurately, fragments of tales. See, these stories were thought lost to your kind, and for good reason —the forces of heaven and hell aligned to purge them from this Earth, for fear of the damage they could cause.”

“And these stories,” I said, “they’re about the Brethren?”

“Yes. Most of it’s nonsense, of course —an oblique passing reference, a half-heard conversation written down a hundred years after the fact. But some of them are quite specific. Dates. Places. Descriptions of rites the likes of which I’ve never seen. And it’s the latter, of course, that our Daniel seemed most interested in —they’re the ones writ large across the wall.”

My eyes settled on one black char inscription scrawled atop all the others, and wrapping around three quarters of the room. The script itself was crude and angular, though if that was Danny’s doing, or the appearance of the language itself, I didn’t know.

“What is this,” I asked, “Phoenician?”

“Close,” Dumas replied. “It’s Ancient Aramaic. Predates Biblical Aramaic by nearly five hundred years.”

“Can you read it?”

The look he gave me, you’d think I just insulted his mother. “It says: ‘As the worlds drew thin, the unclean spirit was cleaved, which in turn summoned forth a Deluge that purged the Nine of sin, and cast their bonds of slavery aside.’ Or, you know, something to that effect.”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

Another look, this one like I’m the kid in class who eats the paste. “What does it sound like it means?”

“It sounds like Danny aims to crack Varela’s soul and wind up a normal boy,” I replied —glib, dismissive.

Only Dumas didn’t take it that way, which, truth be told, kind of freaked me out. “Yeah, that’s what it sounded like to me, too. Only it don’t say ‘crack,’ it says ‘cleave.’ As in fucking rend asunder.”

“The hell’s the difference?”

“The difference, Sam, is all the difference. That shit that went down in San Fran? That was on account of a ‘crack.’ A mean one, yeah —the worst I’ve ever seen —but the soul we cracked was only damaged, not destroyed. I think that Danny’s aiming to destroy Varela’s soul, and that’s a whole other ball of wax. We’re talking split-the-atom bad. Worse, in fact. ’Cause ‘cleave’ ain’t the scariest word up on that wall.”

“OK, I’ll bite —what is?”

“Deluge.”

“Deluge.” Me, playing parrot; skeptical.

“Yep.”

“Like, the Deluge? As in Noah and a giant fucking boat?”

“The very same,” he said. “Well, more or less.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning I don’t know crap about some bearded jackass collecting zebras or whatever, but there ain’t a civilization worth a damn that doesn’t have a flood myth of some kind. To this day, Hindus tell the tale of Manu, who saved Mankind from the rising waters of an apocalyptic flood. Ancient Mesopotamians had Utnapishtim, a man who survived the Deluge only to be granted eternal life. You people got that Noah deal. Point is, the particulars may not agree, but when you add up everything that does agree, it looks to be that once upon a time there was a bigass flood.”

“And you’re telling me it was the Brethren and some weird-ass soul-cleaving mojo that caused it? What about the whole ‘God sent the flood to purge the Earth of Man’s wickedness’ thing?”

“Hey, I ain’t sayin’ for sure that’s not how it went down. Like I said, this shit’s been buried deep by the good guys and the bad guys both, and the only folks who’ve got the juice to answer that are like a mile above my pay grade. But it seems to me if your precious God sent the flood to wash away Man’s wickedness, he did a pretty fucking lousy job. And as far as the whole soul-mojo angle, it’s not as crazy as it sounds. All magic worth a damn requires sacrifice —an infusion of life’s essence to get the gears a-turnin’. That’s why the mystics of your species always use blood to kick-start their little parlor tricks. Sometimes, sure, animal sacrifice will do, but you and I both know human blood is where it’s at if you really wanna get anything done. And a feat of the kind we’re talking about —breaking the bonds of eternal damnation, dropping off the radar of heaven and hell both —that’d require more juice than even a genocide’s worth of blood could muster. That’d require real power. Power like what’d be unleashed if you destroyed a human soul.”

“Why Varela, though? Why’s the soul got to be unclean?”

“Could be because it’s hell’s bond he’s trying to break. Could be it doesn’t have to be at all. Probably Danny’s just going by what he’s read —which ain’t the worst plan, since the Brethren seemed to pull it off.”

“So you’re saying this could work ? Danny does his little song and dance and busts open Varela and he’s free?”

“Maybe. Maybe not. Seems to me it doesn’t matter —what matters is Danny thinks it will. Once he shatters that soul, it won’t matter to the millions he’ll be killing whether his hoodoo was successful.”

“But it can’t be that easy to destroy a soul, can it? I mean, it’s not like he can just whack it with a hammer, or every time some yahoo thrill-seeker’s parachute failed to open, boom —apocalypse.”

“True enough,” Dumas conceded. “Only a demonforged instrument would be capable of inflicting the kind of damage Danny’s after. And I’ll admit, they’re hard to come by. But the boy’s already gotten this far —you think we ought to leave it up to chance he falters now?”

It was a fair point. Actually, from where I was sitting, it was a seriously unfair point, but given that I’m damned and all, that made me more inclined to believe it. I looked for any sign Dumas was putting me on with all of this, but if he was, it didn’t show. And truth be told, it jibed with what I’d seen these past few days; after all, the bug-monster’d said, “Were it not for the Great Truce, for the rules to which we three agreed, I would not abide the Nine at all. But now it seems that truce is crumbling, and with it my patience for your games. I assure you I will not abide a tenth.” So it sounded to me like the Nine and the Brethren were one and the same. And that Danny was gunning to be number ten. Only Captain Crawly had it in his head I was the one causing problems, which didn’t really bode well for me —particularly since I still didn’t have the faintest idea who the hell he was, or how he fitted in to all of this. And the rotten cherry on top of this shit sundae was if I didn’t stop him, not only would I wind up chillin’ in oblivion, but millions of people would die horribly. How’d that old poem go? “Fear death by water.”

Too fucking right, I thought.

“So the Brethren are real, and Danny’s obsessed with them, and he stole Varela’s soul to recreate an ancient mystical rite that, if he’s successful, would bring about a second Great Flood and wipe out civilization as we know it?”

“That’s about the size of it, yeah.”

“Shit,” I said.

“Yeah,” Dumas replied. “Shit.”

“So —what now?” I asked.

“What’re you asking me for? You know what I know. You wanna stop the guy, you’re gonna hafta figure out the rest all by yourself.”

“I thought we both wanted to stop the guy.”

“Yeah, and I just gave you all the help I can.”

“Says the guy who knew about Danny’s caveman ramblings from the get-go and did fuck-all to stop him going rogue.”