Michael's Orders

I had not originally planned Regina’s brother, Michael Vedaste Slaughter, to be in any of the early books in the series. I had him planned to enter at book five and be a complete surprise to everyone. Like, he was a secret Regina kept, even from Hyperion. But then I wrote this little piece and decided Michael needed to be introduced as a side character early on. He is a presence whose story runs parallel to Regina’s and he is closer to her than she ever suspected.

Read it because: You get more of Michael's backstory and learn a little more about the inner workings of Sanctum.

Enjoy!

✽ ✽ ✽

The letter was as bloodless and clean as a Christmas Rose.

Your sister killed your mother and father.

His six year old sister.

No condolences, no explanations of how or why. No, “sorry we didn’t get there in time” either.

He always knew his sister was a monster, a tiny terror, but never in a million years would he have thought her capable of destroying the two people he loved most in the world.

This kind of thing happened more often than Sanctum’s Ecclesiarch liked to admit. A hard lesson from his combat master: those entrenched in combat with evil often suffer evil’s corruptions.

Last summer, one of Michael’s rack mates received a similar letter. He didn’t have a sister, but the message was the same: your father tracked down a hive of demons, but one followed him home and ate your family. Here’s a one-way ticket to Rio de Janeiro.

Deus fucking vult.

Now Michael himself was on the same plane to Brazil with orders in his pocket and his mother’s beidhänder propped up against the seat next to him. It was too long to fit in any of the overhead compartments.

Her ring came with the letter and the sword. It was gold with a ruby cross and the stamp of St. Benedita the Stricken. Both the emblem of his faith and a tool for banishing evil. It had been Mother’s ring. She had served Sanctum as faithfully as any member of the Lex Belli.

Claire Faustina Penetentia-Slaughter would have said she had accomplished more than most while also saying that she hadn’t done enough. There was, after all, still evil in the world.

In the last few days before Michael’s flight, the junior proctor at Light Perpetual spent several painful hours encouraging him to go to confession and lectured him on many multi-faceted and healthy expressions of grief. Michael went to confession. He told the priest the same thing he told the junior proctor: he wanted to kill Dad for what he did, but Mother beat him to it so everything was fine.

Someone in administration must have flagged that because he got more lectures and encouragement to let out his hormonal frustrations with a good, clean ass kicking. Mostly it was his ass getting kicked because he couldn’t be bothered to square off in the arena with Joseph Ketch, his former arch nemesis. Michael’s heart just wasn’t in it.

He had been more surprised than anyone when he got the summons to join the ranks of acolyte a few hours after Ketch blackened both his eyes and split his bottom lip. The acolytes were the newbies, the rookies, the greenies. Swords, or ‘plain steel,’ were newbies who’d just been there longer.

Despite Mother’s rank and privilege, she never opened doors for Michael. She never attempted to make things easier for him. Suffering was her bread and butter and he earned every single scar in service to God and Sanctum.

Mother wasn’t the easiest person to be around. She was demanding and overzealous, but her heart, before it was ripped from her chest, was always in the right place. Dad always used to say, You can’t blame a dog for biting if it’s been bred to kill bears.

As an Interrogator, Mother was sworn to secrecy. Dad understood, the Sworn Swords had similar protocol but he, unlike her, had not been born into Sanctum. Dad kept a lot of his secular habits from before he joined the ranks of the Sworn Swords and earned the thorn-crowned cross for his own brand of viciousness.

One of Michael’s obligations when they landed would be to return Mother’s ring to the Ecclesiarch and light a candle for her in the Inquisitor’s Chapel. Her body, according to the letter, had already been interred in the catacombs in a place of high honor.

He was also encouraged to light a candle for his sister even though she had no ring and had not yet taken her vows. The Holy Entombed rarely received any accolades upon their deaths, no matter how beneficial their servitude, so Mother said.

A kind, misguided administrative desk jockey had been thoughtful enough to send Regina’s little rosary with Mother’s ring. It was plain next to the richness of the gold and the red; a simple silver crucifix and St. Benedita’s medal and Job’s Tears seeds for beads.

Mother never liked Regina, her only daughter. Michael didn’t either, but now, whenever he thought about her annoying, scrunched-up face, he felt something sharp twist in his guts.

Parents, his combat master told him, are not supposed to have favorites and if they do, they keep it secret. Mother named Michael for the patron saint of justice and kicking evil’s ass. She named Regina in honor of the immaculate virgin and the name came with expectations no daughter, no matter how pious, could ever live up to.

Regina was dead. Mother and Dad were dead. And for some stupid reason all he could think about as he stared at the blank taupe screen covering the window was how that little snit got to go duck hunting with Dad while he was stuck at the Light Perpetual training camp, before everything went to Hell.

He pulled the screen up, enjoyed the satisfying sliding sound the plastic made as it scraped along the inside of the hull. The sky was dark and the clouds looked like a blanket of bruises. There was an occasional lightning flash. They were somewhere over the ocean with maybe five or six hours left to go. One of the Chaplains gave him a bottle of water and a packet of stale pretzels before he put his eye mask on and passed out. Across the aisle, his lips move in sharp, quiet twitches like he was praying in his sleep.

Michael tried to pray but he couldn’t. He held his dead sister’s rosary in his hand and moved the seeds through his fingers mindlessly. He wasn’t angry at God, not anymore, he was just tired. He was also very lucky to be alive. Still, the resentment curled around his heart like a mother centipede protecting her babies.

Even though parents weren’t supposed to have favorites neither of Michael’s tried to hide who they loved the most. Sure, Dad snuck him a shot or three of rye whiskey when he knew Mother wasn’t looking. Dad even gave him a few of those awkward, embarrassing life-lesson talks. But despite all Regina’s spitefulness and shortcomings, Dad still loved her best.

✽ ✽ ✽

Want more Slice of Life stories? Check out the master list!