Pandora's Box: Book 3 of the Crystal Raven Series

Brother Jonas and his ilk had crossed into Turkey as part of the exodus from New York. His Paulean Guard was one of eight factions amongst the North American Choir, where more cultural groups had merged than with any other of the thirteen choirs, and leadership could become bloody and convoluted. He and two hundred of his supporters had spent the last week on one of the outwalls and had rotated into the fortress itself. With the outbreak of open warfare between the Brotherhood and the Vampyre Nations, no one gave the current leadership of the Apocrypha Choir much thought. No one except Brother Jonas and the members of the Paulean Guard command.

April woke up in the morning to find guards at the door of the women’s quarters and she and the Wiccan under house arrest. Worse, the door was locked from the outside. What was going on? She really didn’t have to think hard to figure it out. There was really only one man in the whole lot who was hidebound and fanatical enough to do something as stupid as attempting a coup under these circumstances – Brother Jonas. And to make matters worse, there were wounded to tend to, and not only were the Wiccan being held under lock and key, but also the only surgical nurse who made it to the fortress, and one of their two doctors.

When April got hold of the man – well, this was treason during a time of war. There was only one thing she could do. Brother Jonas was about to learn how hard Wiccan justice could be. But for now, she needed to figure out how to get out of here….

Alvaro shared quarters with Angel, the Wandering Jew, and the three boys. He had spent the night alternately reading a treatise on Eaters of the Dead Jean-Claude had written, and bouncing ideas off of Angel. It was considered the definitive authority on the subject, and he read it now with an eye towards finding a solution to their current crisis. He put aside his book and got up to stretch his legs. How long had he been sitting there reading? Four, five hours? Judging by the size of that tome he had been reading, it had probably been a month, maybe a year.

“Do you two old farts want to take a stroll?” He asked.

“Where to?” The Wandering Jew asked, adding his own yawn.

“To check out the Eaters of the Dead lairs,” Alvaro replied, “and try to figure out how quickly their numbers are growing.”

Angel raised a questioning eyebrow.

“Jean-Claude says there is a finite time they can go without food before they will begin feeding on each other. It will give us some idea as to how soon they will attack,” Alvaro elaborated.

At the door, he stopped cold. It wouldn’t open. He turned to Angel. “What’s going on around here?”

Angel tried the door. “I think it’s been welded shut.”

“Has it now?” Alvaro hissed. “Time I show them a little trick Aiko taught me.”

It did not come as easily for him as it did Aiko, but each time he took incorporeal form, it became easier. And so what if his mist was a little pinkish. It added a little panache to the process. As a mist, he drifted up to the door and eased through a crack between it and the frame. Outside he paused to study the door. It had indeed been welded shut and was being guarded by two heavy-set monks in Paulean blue. The silver chains of holy medallions that might have kept Aiko in made him want to laugh. He was Stregoni Benefici, touched by God – holy relics did not harm or ward him off. Perhaps he should demonstrate? He could always choke them with those same holy medallions and blame it on a prank gone wrong.

He wandered through the halls as a mist, noticing that Paulean Guards stood watch over every vital point inside the fortress – the munitions, the stores, even their water supply. His first stop was the quarters of the women. Its door, too, had been barred from the outside and was currently being guarded by no less than four of the blue-clad monks. He smiled then, noting that the Specialists had only rated two guards, while the Wiccans had drawn a double guard. Either they had a lot of faith in the welded door, or Gwen had taught them to respect the Wiccan.

Inside the found April marshalling the Wiccan into circles of thirteen. As they sorted themselves out, she worked on one of those vampyre zingers that Gwen was so fond. He found it pointed straight at him as he rematerialized.

“Whoa! Woman!” Alvaro exclaimed.

“Alvaro,” April lowered the cathode. “What’s going on out there?”

“What you would expect,” Alvaro replied. “That fool Brother Jonas has pulled a coup.”

“I’ll be out of here in a flash, and I will settle his hash,” April seethed.

“Wait,” Alvaro advised. “He has over two hundred monks out there armed to the teeth. Let me co-ordinate something with Gabriel’s people for tomorrow morning at dawn.”

“There are wounded out there,” April objected.

“Getting ourselves killed will not help them,” Alvaro countered. “At dawn, we will attack from three directions.”

April nodded.

Alvaro took incorporeal form again and drifted out of the room. He had work to do before dawn. Outside in the compound, a ludicrous sight stopped him dead in his tracks. Five heavily armed monks had poles with lassoes at the end, like every stereotypical dog catcher from every cartoon, trying to capture Ember’s three hounds and imp. It was not that they were not capturing them, all save Huckleberry, who was too old and wily. The buggers simply disappeared. Blink, and they were suddenly somewhere ten feet away, barking, tails wagging, ready to play.

One of the monks drew his crucifix and stabbed Tangerine in the leg, and suddenly it was no longer a game. Huckleberry growled deep in his throat and leapt in. He caught the monk’s arm above the hand and snapped it off. Strawberry bit off a second monk’s head. Huckleberry raised his head and howled. On cue, Strawberry picked him up by the scruff of the neck. Blink and all four were gone.

Alvaro shook his non-existing head and continued on out of the fortress. At least for the moment, he did not have to worry about Ember’s beast crew, but he did not think the Paulean Guard had seen the last of them. Alvaro had never seen Huckleberry so mad, and the imp had been spitting when they left. Tangerine had left a trail of ichor and had been limping, but Alvaro did not think he was hurt bad. To kill a Hell hound took a blow to the heart – everything else was merely a scratch, quickly healed. If he was still limping when they returned for the rematch, Alvaro would be more than surprised.

Gabriel’s people were currently warding the outwall near their second tank. To avoid being spotted by Brother Jonas’ people or their spies, Alvaro held his incorporeal form until he was almost at the command bunker. When he rematerialized, Brother Austin was meeting with the hawk-nosed Turk and a skinny Egyptian. All three wore grim looks.

“Alvaro,” Brother Austin demanded. “What’s going on at the fortress? I sent a messenger up, and they refused him entrance.”

“Brother Jonas and his crew locked April and the Specialists in their quarters,” Alvaro explained.

“And yet you are here,” the Turk observed.

“What is a locked door to a Specialist?” Alvaro countered. “You have Specialists yourselves – the Dervish and the djinn. The Paulean Guard has none. They put Saint Christopher chains on a door that held in an angel and a Stregoni Benefici.”

The three grinned, but their merriment was short-lived.

“This is an internal matter of your choir,” the Egyptian suggested. “We will withdraw, but wish you luck. I do not like the idea of a man like this controlling our water source.”

When they were alone, Alvaro turned to Brother Austin. “At dawn, have your men at the postern gate. It will be unlocked, and the Paulean Guard will be otherwise occupied.”

“With what?” Austin ventured.

“April and the Wiccan are severely pissed.”

It was a long night. Outside the fortress, those on the walls wondered if this was the night the attack would come and, if the Eaters of the Dead came, where they would fall back to? Inside the fortress, the usurpers were having an even worse night, contending with troubles that had nothing to do with vampyres. Spurred on by the imp, the three hounds returned to the fortress to play. Their first raid was near the kitchen, where they found two monks talking over a cup of coffee. One moment it was a quiet night, the kind of night that wears on a soldier’s nerves as he waited for the enemy he knew was out there, the next a wolfhound was tearing out his throat while two Hell hounds used his companion as a wishbone.

When their bodies were found, extra lights were set in the compounds and patrols began to rove amongst the buildings, weapons at the ready. The second attack came on the walls. A guard turned to find himself facing a snarling wolfhound. His cry of alarm was cut off when Strawberry’s powerful jaws snapped his torso in two. The dozen bolts that leapt to the spot met only air. The hounds had already blinked off somewhere else, where Alvaro suspected the imp was plotting their next assault. Brother Jonas and his Paulean Guard were having a long, painful night, and he could ask for nothing more. Come morning, they would all be tired and bleary-eyed.

April waited until the sun peaked over the horizon, and she would wait no more. She pointed the cathode at the door and it, parts of the wall and the four guards disappeared in a wave of dust and force. The concussion of the explosion could be heard in the distant hills, but she no longer cared. She had wounded to care for, and nearly twelve hundred people to feed. She had no more time to coddle Brother Jonas.

The first patrol running to investigate the explosion met four Wiccan cathodes. Those in the front ranks flew across the compound and slammed into the far wall. The others landed in heaps scattered across the compound. Pieces of armour, weapons and cross bolts fell in a patter like spring rain.

When the reverberations of the initial explosion reached them, Alvaro and Angel threw a shoulder into the door of their quarters. It popped like a cork from a champagne bottle. Before the two guards could recover, the Wandering Jew and Drake shot them point-blank. Alvaro led his five companions into the hallway, racing towards the nearest exit. Outside, a brief, sharp fight had broken out as Gabriel’s men stormed in through the unlocked postern gate led by Brother Austin. The Egyptian was not the only one who did not like these men controlling the food and water, especially since none of them had eaten and had been on short water rations all day and all night.

As he stepped out of the main building, a stray cross-bolt caught Jaime in the throat. Precious Albert caught him in his arms as he fell, but the boy was already choking out his last breath. The brownstone had suffered its first casualty of the war.

It was almost three hours before the wounded, and the prisoners were sorted out. April sat at a table with four others. By tradition, Brotherhood traitors were tried by a tribunal made up of two field commanders from a neutral choir and two members of the High Council. This tribunal was chaired by their own commander, who was April in this case. On her right sat Angel and the Wandering Jew, on her left the Egyptian and the Turk. She supposed that traditionally the chair did not eat soup while presiding over a trial, military pomp and ceremony and all that, but she was hungry, and this was the first chance she had to sit down all morning.

“Bring in the prisoners,” she instructed, blowing on the hot liquid as she did.

Alvaro and Drake did the honours, assisted by a squad of Gabriel’s Rangers. Twenty men, some of them wounded, others with soiled robes, were marched into the room. The room doubled as the cafeteria, and a crowd sat at tables that now lined the walls in a neat horseshoe. The prisoners were chained together in two chain gangs of ten with ankle chains. When they were several feet from the head table, their guards halted them.

April looked down at Brother Jonas over the lip of her bowl, watching as he stood tall and proud, scowling at everything.

“I shouldn’t have made Crystal tell me where she had left you,” April sighed. “You were better off where you were.”

“It matters not,” he spat back, “men of true faith would still have opposed you.”

“Brother Jonas,” April pronounced. “You have been found guilty of treason in that you did attempt to usurp the command of the Apocrypha Choir, causing the death of numerous choir members. And I personally hold you responsible for the death of young Jaime.”

“Go ahead,” Brother Jonas sneered. “Banish me, I will still resist you and your perversion.”

“You misunderstand, sirrah!” The Turk interjected. “You have been found guilty of treason during a time of war. The penalty is death.”

“And since you are so fond of the traditional,” April grated, “we will resort to the traditional punishment. Crucifixion. You and your co-conspirators will be taken to the minefield and nailed to a cross. Perhaps your rotting corpses will do more good than your living bodies have. Bait for the Eaters of the Dead.”

“You can’t do that!” Brother Jonas cried.

“Furthermore,” April continued as if she had not heard him, “the Paulean Guard is to be disbanded, and its members outlawed. The Brotherhood denies them salt, water and shelter. Its assets are forfeited to the Brotherhood. Sentences are to be carried out immediately.

As Alvaro and the guards dragged away the condemned men, April scowled down at her soup. It had grown cold. She didn’t have time to get another bowl. April was due to preside over young Jaime’s funeral, he and the five men they had lost while retaking the fortress. The bodies of the one hundred and eighty dead traitors she would have dragged out into the minefields. They deserved no consideration, not from anyone in the Brotherhood.