" The Brothers Cabal is smart, funny, and dark in all the right places. Imagine Mycroft and Sherlock-if one were a polite vampire and the other were a surly necromancer-up against an army of monsters and magicians. Like Pratchett and Fforde, Jonathan L. Howard puts it all together and makes it look effortless." -Christopher Farnsworth, author of Blood Oath Horst Cabal has risen from the dead. Again. Horst, the most affable vampire one is ever likely to meet, is resurrected by an occult conspiracy that wants him as a general in a monstrous army. Their plan: to create a country of horrors, a supernatural homeland. As Horst sees the lengths to which they are prepared to go and the evil they cultivate, he realizes that he cannot fight them alone. What he really needs on his side is a sarcastic, amoral, heavily armed necromancer. As luck would have it, this exactly describes his brother. Join the brothers Cabal as they fearlessly lie quietly in bed, fight dreadful monsters from beyond reality, make soup, feel slightly sorry for zombies, banter lightly with secret societies that wish to destroy them, and-in passing-set out to save the world. “Jonathan L. Howard has such an effortless way with monsters and the undead that you might suspect him of being, like his creation, Johannes Cabal, a necromancer. The series is addictive.” ― Richard Kadrey, author of the Sandman Slim series “ The Brothers Cabal is smart, funny, and dark in all the right places. Imagine Mycroft and Sherlock -- if one were a polite vampire and the other were a surly necromancer -- up against an army of monsters and magicians. Like Pratchett and Fforde, Jonathan L. Howard puts it all together and makes it look effortless.” ― Christopher Farnsworth, author of Blood Oath “In the vein of the comic horror/fantasies of Tom Holt and Christopher Moore, but substantially weirder. Although it's part of a series, the book can be read as a stand-alone, and fans of the genre should definitely be encouraged to give it a look.” ― Booklist “Howard is a supremely talented writer and the Johannes Cabal series makes for superb reading. It would be easy at this point to say if you like Rankin or Fforde or Pratchett or Holt, then you will love these books, but while it may well be true it would be doing Howard a disservice.” ― Sci-Fi-London “Howard makes it look easy to paint a soul-stealing murdering necromancer as a sympathetic character; that, folks, is worth the price of admission.” ― San Diego Union-Tribune “Cabal, the detective and necromancer, is full of charismatic amorality, making him both a classical and refreshing antihero.” ― Time Out Chicago “Howard's ear for witty banter and his skill at rendering black comedy bode well for the future.” ― Publishers Weekly “Johannes Cabal would kill me for saying this, but he's my favorite Zeppelin-hopping detective. The fellow has got all the charm of Bond and the smarts of Holmes--without the pesky morality.” ― Daniel H. Wilson, author of Robopocalypse “Howard's characters, relentless imagination, twisting plotlines, and use of language make the Johannes Cabal series a real pleasure to read.” ― Richard Kadrey, author of the Sandman Slim novels JONATHAN L. HOWARD is a game designer, scriptwriter, and a veteran of the computer-games industry since the early nineties, with titles such as the Broken Sword series to his credit. He is author of Johannes Cabal the Necromancer,   Johannes Cabal the Detective,  and  Johannes Cabal: The Fear Institute , as well as the YA novels Katya’s World and Katya’s War. He lives in the United Kingdom with his wife and daughter. Brothers Cabal By Jonathan L. Howard St. Martin's Press Copyright © 2015 Jonathan L. Howard All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-1-250-07396-9 Chapter 1 IN WHICH THE DEAD ARE RAISED, BLOOD IS DRUNK, AND EAVES ARE DROPPED The party travelled through the flatlands, guided by an unhelpful map. They were a sombre and sober group, ten men and three women, who wore hiking clothes and impressively stacked backpacks. An astute observer would have noted that their clothes and gear were all new, and that several showed signs of blisters due to their boots not being properly worn in, and that none looked happy in a woollen hat. There were no observers, however, for the flatlands are unutterably tedious and usually lacking in things worth the observing. Their leader paused and consulted the map again. This took the form of a large square of predominantly blank paper upon which the legend and gridlines had consumed far more ink in the printing than any physical features. There were a few paths—even to call them ‘lanes’ would be an aggrandisement—a few ditches with pretensions towards being streams, and one long earthwork that travelled into the centre of the map and then petered out, as so many things in the flatlands tended to. Drystone walls, interest, lives … all fading away. At least the earthwork had the decency to stick up: a long