CHAPTER 64: CRUCIFORM | THE RAID—VI

  SPECTRE—NOVEMBER 26th, 1992 | MORNING

  ?

  Leroy had Captain Holmes to thank for a whole lot of things.

  At the moment, an ‘appreciate it’ was owed, due largely in part to the fact that he’d kept Leroy standing. Even with the artificial vigilance of Vigor, his body was still sore, still mending, and still in need of two weeks worth of rest to make up for the last 72-hours alone.

  Clayton Trench’s swarms had proven relentless thus far; quick, ravenous, and more resilient than Leroy gave them credit for, and the only reason they hadn’t been completely devoured was due to Captain Holmes’ badge. He had placed it onto the metal grating of the catwalk, in between a fear-paralyzed Arthur Yeager and a tired Leroy.

  At the center of it was a pale and yellow reverse pentagram, which fueled a small dome-like barrier. Fortunately for them, it was a complete sphere, thereby preventing the insects from infiltrating anywhere within their 360-degree radius.

  “Shit! How much longer is this thing gonna’ hold, man?” Arthur asked, fingers notched along the string of Canis. Its subtle orange glow illuminated the inside of the dome, which was otherwise blacked out by the oscillating swarm that crawled around it in search of a way in.

  “Not much longer now, I don’t think,” Captain Holmes admitted.

  Something struck the dome.

  Arthur wobbled in place. Leroy nearly fell into Captain Holmes.

  It was the same something that had struck it a few times over already; Bluestein’s latest and greatest experiment, Emilio la Cerva. His gargantuan fist created small fault lines along the dome and flattened entire swathes of insects, briefly enabling daggers of gray light to pour in between the red-brown of the clustered juices of fist-sized arthropod splatter.

  “Holmes,” Leroy began, both hands clasped around Old Man Winter. “Got a plan. Need you to buy us some more time.”

  “No can do,” Captain Holmes admitted.

  “What the hell? What do you mean, no can do?!” Arthur whined.

  “The badge, damn it, it’s artificed! Empowered by a kineticist, and the runes on the back of it give it the command to form this dome you see around us. And if either of you know anything about artificing—”

  Emilio struck again. Insects splattered against the dome, and further splintering lines sprawled along the pale-yellow barrier. Leroy hadn’t been counting, but that freak of a man had been at it for a while now, and sooner rather than later, that dome would give.

  “When the arcane is being used as a component, the empowerment is only as strong as the person empowering it,” Leroy said. “I get that right?”

  Captain Holmes nodded. “And our dedicated kineticist over at Sterling Yard isn’t here to give it more juice.”

  “Alright, old timer, if you’ve got a plan, spill,” Arthur pleaded, nudging Leroy with a hard elbow.

  “I have a concept of a plan,” Leroy muttered.

  “What? A concept of a plan? Lord forgive me for my vanity, but Jesus Christ! How the fuck does that help us right now?” Arthur yelled.

  Vermin goo splattered across the dome once more, and by now, the dome was a verifiable spider web of fault lines. By the time Emilio went for another solid right hook, it would shatter. But he was slow—had to wind up.

  “Holmes, Clayton’s bugs. What do you remember about them?”

  “Their diet is flesh,” Captain Holmes said. “And lots of it.”

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Arthur said hurriedly. “So, if they breach, we’re—”

  “Yes,” Captain Holmes interrupted.

  “Arthur, do it,” Leroy said.

  “What? Now?”

  “Yes, damn it, now!” Leroy shouted.

  Arthur removed his finger from his drawstring and quickly removed the strange and thin metal-forged carrier tube that he had latched across his back. He held it sideways in front of himself, ensuring that it was at a complete vertical angle, and closed his eyes.

  “Saying, Hurt not the earth, neither the sea, nor the trees, till we have sealed the servants of our God in their foreheads,” Arthur recited.

  The rosary beads flew outward, and the wax seal along the top of the metal carrier tube melted. Pale-yellow light cracked and shattered as Emilio’s fist slammed into the dome for the final time; and insects flooded in like unholy locusts.

  ?

  Clayton had since taken a seat on the step nearest to the VIP Lounge, hands hanging between his knees, fingers interlocked, his eyes red and dry in focus.

  Insects crawled out from beneath his bandaged body; they scattered along the length of his arms with such violence that they made the insides of his black track jacket move on its own.

  The seven-foot-tall mass that called itself Emilio la Cerva, covered in burned and blue skin, had his fist lodged into the catwalk itself, where he’d punched straight through the metal. The metal bolts and plates along his entire back and shoulders gleamed, and the mechanical hiss of ether being delivered through the massive pumps in his spine was the only thing louder than the insectoid white-noise of the Clayton’s swarm.

  The monster was not entirely useless. It had, after all, made quick work of two additional arrivals—a young man with a shaved head and a lycan—who both were rendered immobile and prone by the beast of a man soon after ascending the stairs onto the mezzanine.

  They were not dead; only temporarily incapacitated. A shame. Had the oaf’s attention not been so easily swayed towards Leroy Waters and his entourage in their protective ward, he might have removed those two from the equation entirely. But Clayton was neither his friend nor his master, nor would he be able to control such a blue-skinned creature even if he wanted to.

  “Huruhrgrh!” wailed Emilio, cocking his arm back to strike the protective ward.

  Clayton stood up. “How utterly strange.”

  Clayton scratched at the bandages that covered his entire head. A putrid and rotting stench leaked out from it, alongside a spew of black that fluttered out and joined the dispersing swarm that had once completely covered the dome. Small clusters of black awaited the command of their master; the sole beholder of the Law of the Husk.

  Dry eyes squinted.

  A piece of parchment as wide as a building schematic fluttered through the air, and by sheer intention, Clayton’s insects retrieved it and brought it to him. He grabbed hold of it, brows furrowed, studying the strange symbols—glyphs of a ritual nature, markings that had to be learned, coveted, and protected. All inaccessible to those without some degree of formal instruction. A language of magic that was not his own, yet somehow embroidered in the characters that he knew to his very antithesis.

  It was a ritual circle of some kind, and even still in his hands, it hummed with traces of power. At the four corners of the parchment were red crosses shaped like swords. In his hands was the proprietary magic of the Order of the Wardens, and the only thing he had yet to make out among the strangeness of its circles and its marks and its ideograms was Latin; written by a newer hand than the one which had written his antibible, the De Vermibus Obscuris.

  “Ordinatio Sacrosancti Adventus,” Clayton muttered. “Hn. Array of Sacrosanct Arrival.”

  Orange light emerged, and forced Clayton’s attention towards a hound made of nothing but blaze and flame. It bobbed and weaved through the slowness of Emilio’s strikes, each of which dented the catwalk and shook the metal stairs Clayton was seated upon. And it wasn’t just one; but two hounds. Three hounds. Four hounds. Five hounds.

  Clayton directed his swarms towards the firedogs, snuffing out their flames one by one, sacrificing a cluster’s worth of his servants to stop each of them from reaching Clayton himself.

  They were coming from above.

  Clayton squinted and narrowed his gaze on their source.

  A necrotic hand with granite-colored skin jutted out from the large shadow casted by the far side of the open atrium, above the 2nd level mezzanine and closer to the roof itself, far, perhaps, but not too far as to obscure their features. Shadows leaked out from under its finger nails, and on its open palm stood not three targets, but four.

  A captain of the Civic and Occult Authority.

  An arbiter.

  A warden.

  And between each of them, at the forefront of this necrotic hand, was a man in a two-toned prisoner’s jumpsuit; white at the top along the shoulders and a dull brown-red everywhere else. His hair was long, a fading black, and to his shoulders, and what had once been five-o-clock-shadow was now a proper beard. Streaks of white hair framed his temples. On his forehead was a branded cross.

  ?

  Arthur slunk back his glowing orange bowstring. Swarms of insects advanced towards them with reckless abandon, and each time they did, Canis spat out a flaming hound to evaporate them into a putrid vapor. Captain Holmes kept his Warwick M9 trained forward, just in case, while Leroy held Old Man Winter idly at his side.

  Gideon retched into the palm of the necrotic, abyssal hand which held all of them up along the side of the wall. Then he retched again, and by the third time, he was dry heaving.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “Get it together, Gideon,” Leroy said, crouching down and smacking the back of his jumpsuit.

  Gideon wiped bile away from his bearded mouth. “You… ever been through one of those things before? Have you?”

  Leroy’s eyes widened slightly as Gideon turned towards him. A brand was right smack on the middle of his forehead; half a scar and half a glyph.

  “Relax, Cruciform, it’s normal, ” Arthur said, shaking out his sizzling hand. Each time he drew that bow back, Canis demanded more burning flesh from his fingers. “Dizziness. Nausea. Vomiting. Takes ‘bout a dozen times back and forth through an Array of Sacrosanct Arrival before you’re used to it. Hell, I’m still not.”

  “Focus!” Captain Holmes barked. “Clayton’s swarms won’t let up anytime soon.”

  “Yeah, right, I hear you, but bring it down a few notches, man” Arthur muttered.

  With a pivot, Arthur rapidly-fired. He winced and groaned each time he pulled back Canis’s drawstring, delivering another small pack of firedogs towards the oncoming swarms. If he kept it up, Arthur’s hand would be damn near stripped of its upper layer of flesh. Between the smell of that and Gideon’s puke on Leroy’s boot, Leroy didn’t know which was worse.

  “Good save,” Leroy said, helping Gideon to his feet.

  Gideon issued him a sidelong glance. “Yeah. You’re welcome. A second sooner, though, and I don’t think I could’ve grabbed all of us and sunk into the shadows. Why am I here, Leroy?”

  A wry smile stretched across his face. “You signed your soul away for one reason. Remember?”

  “Marcus,” Gideon muttered.

  Leroy clasped a hand down onto Gideon’s shoulder. “Just behind that stinking mess of a motherfucker with the bandages and the bugs, Gideon, is Marcus. Holed up in his VIP Lounge, probably sitting with his feet kicked up in his office, none the wiser.”

  Emilio’s hefty footsteps pulsed along the catwalk, his eyelidless gaze and steel-covered, mutilated mess of a face renewed with purpose. The monstrosity of what used to be a man lowered himself into a squat, and with a sudden and pulsing jump, leaped towards Gideon’s necrotic hand, arms raised and ready to pummel all who stood there.

  ?

  Shadow soaked fingers tightened around each of them, enclosing Leroy, Captain Holmes, Arthur and Gideon in a tight and unholy grasp. With a sudden slink, the hand retracted back into the shadows along the wall.

  They emerged along the far end of the dance floor, closer to where the DJ stage was. Leroy’s eyes widened.

  Aria Remeau was missing an arm and laying in a pile of her own blood, with red dredges still sputtering out from what looked like nail-shaped holes in her skull. Rachel Chen lay in the center of a crater that took up more than half of the dance floor itself, seemingly unharmed. Why Cameron left her alive wasn’t something Leroy could think to answer either.

  His eyes were old, and he was tired, but he could still see. Where they'd just departed from courtesy of Gideon, Cameron and Tania had been displaced like a bunch of cannon fodder.

  But Leroy didn’t imagine they’d be useless for too much longer. And Tania looked different. She was bigger, and more wolf than woman—taller, composed of wiry muscle and large lupine legs, with a tail to match and a flowing wave of agitated black-maroon fur. They were laid out across the bar on the 2nd level mezzanine, limbs sprawled out amongst rubble consisting of wood from the splintered bar counter and the shattered glass of booze formerly on display. Guts hovered above the pile, single eye primed and ready to blast towards Emilio if he dared to get closer.

  At any rate, he couldn't hit them at the moment. Emilio’s massive and muscled blue arm was lodged into the concrete wall where Leroy and company had just been standing on Gideon’s hand-thing.

  A looming cloud of black noise swiveled towards them.

  Arthur let loose, reaching along his chest-strapped bandolier and chugging what must’ve been two vials of diluted p-blood; not quite as immediate or as potent as proper pasteurized demon blood, but enough to stop his hand from burning off. He’d given Leroy the know-how back over in the Pines.

  Captain Holmes trained his Warwick M9 towards Clayton Trench, who leaned along the railings of the catwalk, his dried eyes looking down upon them with an uninterested streak to them.

  “What did you say?” Gideon asked, his words only barely leaking through the noise of Captain Holme’s bullet fire.

  Clayton ducked and crouched and ran along the railings of the catwalk.

  “To who?” Leroy mused.

  “Bishop Hargreeves, the day you dropped me off at St. Catherine's, when the two of you had your whispering session under the effigy,” Gideon said. “I.. frankly, Leroy, I thought they were going to execute me.”

  “They would’ve,” Leroy stated plainly. “I put in a good word. Now you're a Cruciform. You’re welcome, by the way.”

  Gideon’s brows furrowed inward, and anger swelled in his dark brown eyes. “Now I’m a slave, Leroy. A prisoner rotting in a cell in the middle of some dungeon ninety-percent of the time, and ten-percent of the time, they point me towards monsters like a missile. Me and the others.”

  “Reloading! Leroy, keep him busy!” Captain Holmes shouted.

  Leroy pulled back the slide of Old Man Winter. The portion of it towards the end of the barrel made entirely of large, filed down teeth with permafrost plaque chittered. Leroy cooed and hushed his pistol, and it stopped. No runes whined. Its effects, not yet active, meant that the bullet that zipped out from his aimed handgun was just that: a bullet.

  After that, he shot another. And another. At this distance, he couldn’t hope to hit Clayton, not when he was bobbing and weaving through smaller swarms that covered his movements like black plumes. Good. That pressure kept him on his toes, and it gave Arthur a break from sentry duty.

  “You good?” Leroy asked, turning to Captain Holmes.

  Captain Holmes nodded firmly and began firing.

  Leroy nodded back, pressed a finger along the side of his gun to eject the magazine, and reached for the another magazine on the inside of his leather jacket, right along his inside gun-holster harness.

  “Look. Yeah, maybe, Gideon,” Leroy said. “But you’re alive.”

  “I have a fucking cross on my forehead, Leroy,” Gideon retorted.

  “But you’re alive,” Leroy said plainly. “And you’re still not Marcus’s errand boy anymore. So. Silver lining, yeah?”

  Arthur tossed an emptied vial of diluted p-blood to the side. “Consider yourself lucky. The Cruciform Division upholds a holy and righteous duty, alright? That brand you wear might not save your soul, but, hey. At least you know God had a greater purpose for you.”

  Leroy eyed Arthur. “Keep those mutts coming. Captain Holmes is going to be fresh out in a second.”

  If it weren’t for Arthur’s aim, his burning hand, and the hounds of flame that jutted out from that glowing orange drawstring, they’d all be insect food by now.

  Each time Canis spat out another firedog, it chased, and chased, and chased. Moreover, Arthur’s precision and ability to react in a timely manner wasn’t just impressive, it was downright preternatural; a display of marksmanship that itself felt like it was more arcane than it was a testament of skill. Leroy hated to admit it, but the kid was just that good, and he was sure as hell glad that he’d gotten Minister Rostavich to sign him on as an interim arbiter. Eisenhower’s presence would’ve been nice; but Arthur did just fine. Did better than fine.

  A sour look plagued Gideon’s expression. He glanced towards the VIP Lounge overlooking the dance floor. “You’re sure he’s there?”

  “Mostly, yeah,” Leroy said. “Think you can handle it?”

  A rhetorical question, and a stupid one at that. After their initial meeting, Leroy didn’t have to worry about the occult pulse—the surge of power that emerged when two contractors met for the first time. Captain Holmes and Arthur had been spared of that, thankfully. But he could feel Gideon’s thirst. His desire. He and whatever demon he’d signed his soul to were at the precipice of fulfilling their vow.

  “Yeah,” Gideon declared. “I can.”

  “Holmes, you think you and the kid can deal with Clayton?” Leroy asked.

  Captain Holmes nodded. “Consider it done. Go.”

  “No way, no can do, you are definitely not going anywhere with the Cruciform, old man,” Arthur said.

  “As Eisenhower explained it to me during our phone call, when I was getting this whole thing finalized, Arthur,” Leroy paced over to him, groaning all the while, body still sore, tired, and aching. “That brand on his forehead. It’s connected to your red cross tattoo. No?”

  “Well, yeah,” Arthur said in a low tone.

  “Right. Eisenhower also said that, if you want to, you can activate that link,” Leroy said.

  “Not a link. It's a damn kill switch,” Gideon blurted. “Kid, I won’t try anything, alright? Learned my lesson on my first deployment. He taps it once, it hurts. A lot. Twice hurts more than a lot. Third time is when I go splat, or so I’ve been told. Look, just let me do what I’m here to do.”

  Arthur remained skeptical.

  “Gideon, how far can that hand-thing of yours go?”

  “As far as I can see, sort of,” Gideon said.

  “I’ll sweeten the deal for you here, Arthur. Make your job easier. Gideon here, he’ll grab that pesky fuck with the bugs, and he’ll pull him down here, and he’ll set up a clean shot for me. Right, Gideon?”

  Captain Holmes’s gun clicked. He was officially out of bullets, which meant Clayton wouldn’t be feeling any pressure, and whatever he had left to throw at them would be coming towards them soon. Leroy could even hear the beginnings of a deafening buzz.

  Gideon nodded. “Sure. Easy enough.”

  “And then I’ll take a shot,” Leroy said, adjusting his grip along Old Man Winter.

  Anger creeped through Arthur’s eyes. “Could’ve done that a bit earlier.”

  “Didn’t have a chance earlier, Arthur, on account of us being stuck in that dome,” Leroy retorted.

  “A dome that saved us all from certain death, damn it,” said Captain Holmes.

  Arthur and Leroy both nodded their heads in subtle agreement.

  “Yeah, fine,” Arthur said. “But I have a hunch that dude is already dead. Or, close to it. I mean.. the smell, man. My guess? It’s not even organs inside of him, just.. bugs. Worms. Flies. Eugh..”

  “Not far off,” Captain Holmes said. “Like I said before, he’s a ritualist. His one-trick pony thing is the insects, but, calls it Law of the Husk. Learned it from some old book. Or so he told us. Before we hauled that motherfucker into Blackpool Penitentiary, back in ‘89, we added him to the Registry. As far as we know, he’s just a shell. A breeding ground for the insects he wields. Just a brain and rotting skin.”

  Plumes upon plumes of black emerged from the catwalk up above. The swarm was growing.

  “Yeah, so, that said, don’t know how good your bullets are going to do though, old man,” Arthur said, preparing Canis.

  The rows of large teeth, expertly sandpapered down and fitted along the slide, chittered and shook, shifting and grinding the permafrost plaque between their grooves and rivets. A mosaic of runes and characters along the gunmetal woke, and this time, Leroy didn’t coo, nor did he hush. He pulled back the slide and held it. Old Man Winter woke.

  “Not shooting a bullet, Arthur,” Leroy said. “Gideon. You ready?”

  “As I can be,” Gideon said.

  CoopAlice for her especially kind and thoughtful review, which truly made my day.

  Huzzah, another star added to the Ritual meter!

  Also, waaaay back in Chapter 57, we saw Arthur carrying that tube on his back--this chapter we learned what it was, but I'll add some further notes here because why not! Those carrier tubes are used by the Order of the Wardens, typically, for rapid deployment of personnel across vast distances, not necessarily just for the Cruciform Division. They require a prayer recital in order to be unsealed, which is why Arthur had to go through the trouble of saying all of that aloud for the rosary beads wrapped around the tube to disengage.

  The Array of Sacrosanct Arrival would be classified as a form of ritualistic magic--sort of like how the Exorcist Association has specific and closely guarded learned spells, the Order of the Warden also has their own. The red cross tattoos on their necks would also fall under this category.

  P.S - The Cruciform Division is basically a suicide squad for the Order of the Wardens composed entirely of occult practitioners, fiends, and the likes.

  LEROY WATERS

  ARTHUR YEAGER

  CAPTAIN HOLMES

  CLAYTON TRENCH

  MR. ETHER

  GIDEON DRAVES

  Enjoying BRINEHAVEN? If so, please a review or a rating, it helps this story gain much needed visibility!