The Mysteries of Holly Diem (Unknown Kadath Estates Book 2)

by Zachary Rawlins

  The Servant of the Deep made no noise in response. I don’t mind saying that freaked me out.

  It took a hesitant step on its wounded leg, and then bent to try to remove the scalpel.

  The other fish-person tried to sneak up on me, but evolution – or whatever – equipped the Servants of the Deep poorly, when it came to stealth. I heard the raspy wheezing of its breath before it was within a meter, not to mention the stench of decaying marine life. I avoided a few clumsy stab attempts, while I slipped behind the injured fish-person, still tugging at the scalpel embedded in its leg, and snatched up its abandoned cudgel.

  The driftwood was lighter than I expected, even with the metal inlay that added weight and durability, but awkwardly sized. I would have liked a practice swing or two, but the fish-person and its curved knives had other ideas.

  The second blade was more of a hindrance than an advantage. I ducked his first attack, and then sidestepped the next, maneuvering the cudgel up high enough to be useful. I choked up on it like a baseball bat and swung at the fish-person’s head. The driftwood cracked in my hands. The fish-person’s head bowed as if it were made of clay.

  The cudgel was hopelessly cumbersome, so I tossed it aside, turning my attention back to the Servant of the Deep I had wounded earlier. His attempts to remove the scalpel had ultimately proved successful, but then he tossed the implement aside, to limp at me with bare hands. I got my hands up and squared my shoulders, rocked up onto the balls of my feet, and waited.

  The fish-person charged right in, both hands extended as if it intended to hug me. I gave it a couple jabs and a right hook as it came in, each blow sinking deep into the scaly, loose flesh of its face. When the hook connected with the fish-person’s temple, I felt the bone of the skull flex and indent. The thing just kept on coming.

  Clumsy, webbed hands closed around my neck. What little air I managed to inhale was tainted by the smell of spoiled shellfish. I shoved my arm inside and tried to break the grip, but had no luck. I smashed my left hand into its abdomen, stomped its instep, and then hit it with an uppercut that warped its jaw and loosened several of the needle-teeth that filled its grotesque mouth. The Servant of the Deep ignored the damage and focused on strangling me.

  I kicked and struggled, the fish-person’s ribs bowing with each strike as if they were plastic. I attacked its elbow in an attempt to break the grip, to no effect. My vision began to dim and darken, while my movement became more wild, and difficult to control. I stumbled, and then fell backwards, the weight of the fish-person resting directly on my desperate lungs. Nearly blind, I dragged my nails across its face, and then dug my thumbs into its round, milky eyes.

  They were surprisingly shallow and flat. I had the left one out in no time, which finally got its attention. It released its hold on my neck to try and save its other eye. The air whistling through my crushed windpipe was all that I could hear. The fish-person seized my right arm with both webbed hands, so I focused on driving my left thumb as deep into its brain as was possible.

  My thumb progressed into the eye socket as far as the first knuckle with a squelching sound. The Servant gained control of my right arm, and pulled it toward its nightmare of a mouth. I put everything I had behind my left thumb, working around the elastic bone into the slippery flesh. The fish-person’s needle teeth had no trouble with my jacket and shirt, sinking deep into my right forearm. I hollered and pressed; teeth scraped against my radial bone.

  I felt a membrane give way, with a sensation like a rubber band breaking, and my thumb plunged into the creature’s head. Its mouth opened in a mute expression of…something. Then its arms went limp. It took a concerted effort to free my arm from the toothy confines of its mouth.

  The world steadied and brightened as I caught my breath. I made it to my feet, and then noticed the Servant of the Deep I brained with the cudgel crawling clumsily toward me, a divot running down to the crown of its deformed head. I spared a moment for a glance behind me, and watched Yael use a short metal spike to pin a fish-person’s foot to the stone floor as it lurched after her. The creature gave the impaled limb a distracted look, and then tore it free, heedless of severed flesh and splintered bone. Yael retreated slowly, fumbling at her belt, the final Servant circling around behind her.

  I planted a soccer kick on the crawling fish-person’s head, and then another, to no visible or auditory effect. I abandoned the effort, turning my attentions to the Servant behind Yael. It paid me no attention, intent on ambushing the girl in the gas mask. I kicked out its legs at the knee until it toppled, then seized it by the folds of its fleshy cheeks, and drove its skull into the floor. Again. And then again, until its struggles subsided.

  I had no illusions, at this point, of killing the thing. Hell, I wasn’t even sure I was capable of injuring them.

  “Yael!” I shouted. “We have a serious problem, here.”

  “I know!” She came to a halt behind me, digging frantically in her satchel. “Buy me a couple seconds?”

  I wanted to complain, but there was no time. I met the Servant coming in, ducking its outstretched arms and popping up inside. We tangled up in a wet, angry mess. While the monster attempted to wrap its clumsy hands around my injured neck, I leaned on its neck and battered its abdomen with full-force knees. With each blow, I felt the fish-persons ribs flex and cave. After three, it stopped trying to strangle me. After five, it finally dropped to the ground. I brought down both fists just behind the ear in an axe-handle strike, my knuckles sinking into the pliable skin and bone of its head.

  The Servant of the Deep dropped, but didn’t stop moving. Its partner was nearly on me, despite the limp Yael had given it, and the one-eyed fish-person was already on its feet again. I backed away from the advancing Servant, throwing wild punches that didn’t even annoy it.

  There was a metallic clanging, and an aluminum canister rolled across the floor of the room, spitting moss-green smoke from either side. A hand covered my mouth, and then another clamped over my eyes. I nearly lashed out, but then I noticed the gas mask pressing against the back of my neck.

  “Be still,” Yael hissed. “Hold your breath.”

  Behind Yael’s fingers, my eyes burned and watered. I held my breath as long as I could imagine doing that, but Yael’s hand remained firmly attached to my mouth. I inhaled through my nose in an involuntary gesture of panic, and the air burned like menthol inside my nose and smelled like burning plastic. The pain in my sinuses was staggering, my eyes watering like a fountain. My lungs rejected it entirely, expelling my breath in a lung-scouring cough. Yael lost her grip on my head, and I fell to the ground, only dimly aware of my cheek resting against the stone.

  I took another breath, and it was expelled in a similar squirming, agonizing convulsion. My nasal passages screamed, my mouth filled with caustic saliva. I jerked and writhed as I fought the need for air, my chest throbbing.

  Behind my eyelids, the world went dark.

  Before I could make my peace with it, I smelled silicone and Yael’s sweat. Unable to hold out any longer, I took a massive, shuddering gasp. The air was stale and tasted of rubber and chlorine, but I didn’t choke. I opened my eyes, and couldn’t see much of anything besides a membrane stretched crudely across my face. I eventually worked out that Yael had pulled her mask over my head – but it was facing backwards, blinding me.

  Beside me, Yael coughed and retched. I peeled the mask cautiously off my head, and was neither blinded nor suffocated. I glanced around, but the Servants of the Deep were all cowering around the periphery of the room, lying prostrate, or covering their faces with webbed hands. Madeleine Diem was absent. Yael and I spent several minutes spitting and expelling mucus, wiping and rubbing our eyes. I was terminally exhausted, the blighting residual effects of the Azure muddying my head, my arm burning from the needle teeth of the Servant, the wound in my stomach weirdly slick and sensitive to the touch.

  “What was that?”

  “Desiccant,” Yael said, coughing. Her eyes were
ruby-red, her nose running like an open tap. “Professor Dawes came up with the idea, but I helped synthesize it. The compound isn’t fatal, but it should incapacitate them for a while.”

  “Looks that way.” I nodded, and then made a show of clearing my throat, shifting my feet, and averting my eyes. Yael watched in open confusion and alarm. “Thanks, by the way. For the mask. You didn’t have to do that.”

  “Unless I wanted you to live,” she reminded me gently, wiping her nose. “Then I had to do that.”

  “Oh. Well, still. Thanks.”

  “Don’t mention it.”

  Everyone always says that, but Yael actually sounded as if she meant it.

  I knew what April expected from me – she didn’t need to say anything, I just knew – but right about then, doubt entered the equation, where Yael was concerned. That was a new and mortifying experience, so I shoved it aside for later perusal, and focused on locating my scalpel in the fishy carnage. It has sentimental value, you see.

  “What now?”

  “I don’t know.” Yael cleaned her eyes with a tissue. “The observatory is probably full of those monsters.”

  “Yeah. Do you have any more desiccant?”

  She shook her head and then suffered a sneezing fit.

  “No. I wasn’t even sure if it would work.”

  “Do you have anything else in that pouch that would…?”

  She laughed half-heartedly and dumped out the contents on the stone in front of me: a cellphone in a turquoise case, a granola bar, her picks in their velvet wrapping, a small aerosol can, a clutch stocked with lip-gloss and eyeliner pencil, a set of squat metal spikes that looked like tent pegs, a flashlight, and a transit card.

  “You ever a Boy Scout, Yael?”

  “What? Why would I…?”

  “Never mind. Should we check what it looks like down there?”

  Yael sighed and nodded her agreement, pulling the mask over her head. The desiccant left a fine green powder on the floor, and puffed into tiny clouds with each footsteps. The heavy wooden door was as we had left it. There was no sign that the Servants of the Deep attempted to force their way in. Yael shook her spray can, which sounded nearly empty, and nodded at me.

  I took a deep breath, set my feet, and then pulled the door open in one smooth jerk, leaping back to avoid the expected flood of squishy fish-people.

  Dunwich waited impassively on the other side, orange tail swishing.

  Yael cried out and seized him, holding the disconcerted cat to her chest. I looked over the railing of the stairwell, and was not surprised to see the Cats of Ulthar swarming over the floor of the observatory. The few fish-people who remained weren’t moving, and looked rather well nibbled. I didn’t see Snowball, but I was sure he was about. I couldn’t imagine what Yael had on the Cats of Ulthar, but it must have been huge, to merit such efforts on their part.

  “You’re popular with cats, Yael.” She had removed her mask, but persisted in her attempts to cuddle with the reluctant cat. “People too, I guess. It’s pretty amazing.”

  “I look after my friends, Preston,” Yael explained seriously, finally released Dunwich, who immediately leapt clear of any further hugging attempts. “That’s all there is to it.”

  “If you say so.”

  “Dunwich told me that the Servants of the Deep didn’t even try to fight,” Yael said, taking a comb from her satchel and running it through her hair. “They tried to flee as soon as the Cats of Ulthar arrived. The bodies are the ones who didn’t make it to the water fast enough.”

  “Odd. There are a lot of cats,” I said, glancing at the activity on the observatory floor. “But there were so many fish-people. Are they really so weak that they had to run from a bunch of stray cats?”

  That earned me a pair of glares.

  “The Cats of Ulthar are a greater power than you realize,” Yael said stiffly. “You are not entirely wrong to be suspicious, however. The Servants of the Deep outnumbered the cats, who came expecting a fight.”

  That seemed like a good time to shut up, so I did. We hung around a while longer, poking around. Yael messed about with Madeleine’s old chair and restraints while I examined the strange devices the fleeing fish-people had abandoned. They were clearly weapons, though they looked more like something that belonged in a brass band. I couldn’t make heads of tails of the controls, which were like contoured piano keys and nearly as numerous. They were all different, as if each device was manufactured by hand, for divergent purposes. When I saw Yael and Dunwich rounding the last curve in the stairwell, I abandoned the devices were I found them, and joined them in leaving.

  Prospect Hill seemed taller on the way down. It was hardly past noon, and I already wanted to go to bed. I was dragging, my brain foggy and unresponsive thanks to the Azure hangover. I checked my cell – Prospect Hill is one of the few places in the city with reliable service – and texted April. Yael was similarly absorbed, but careful enough that I couldn’t read her phone over her shoulder.

  “I’m hungry.” Yael turned off her phone and dropped it into the denim bag she had slung across her shoulder. “Do you want Sichuan, Preston?”

  “You mean the Chinese place?”

  “Yes.” A sigh. “The Chinese place.”

  I was hungry. Also suspicious. Low blood sugar won out.

  “Why not?”

  Why not indeed.

  Yael nodded and led the way. I lingered behind and tried to figure angles with a drug-sullied mind. I felt adrift in a sea of conflicting emotions and horrible fish-people.

  “There!” Yael yelled, pointing at something I couldn’t see. “In the shadows! The mask! Preston, do you see it?”

  She took off sprinting before I could respond.

  I’m not even really sure what it was that Yael saw at the base of the hill – something in the shadows of a gabled and gilded home, an injustice requiring her particular intervention – but she went off like a shot, yelling about a mask. And maybe she was right about that, I thought, squinting to see through the multi-hued lights that danced at the edges of my vision – there was something the color of bone bleached in the sun, conflicting and contradictory motion, a vague approximation of a face…

  I ran after Yael, shouting her name.

  That was a mistake.

  She turned a corner at the base of the hill, her shoes skidding across the cobblestones, chasing after something I couldn’t be sure I had seen. I trailed after her, the muscles on my injured side crying out with every other step, and made what felt like the same turn.

  The street was empty, but just past a curve in the road, I was certain I heard Yael shouting. I ran after her as best I could.

  An empty street, devoid of traffic. I made a right turn into an alley, chasing echoes.

  I felt cold metal prongs against my back, and had time to tense before the cattle prod activated. The current tore through my body, clenching my jaw and taking the wind from my lungs. There was a sharp crack, but Yael was too far away to hear it. The pain spread like ice water, frigid numbness followed by trembling agony. My knees went soft, but before I could stumble, a thick plastic bag was pulled over my head. I tried to suck in air in a panic, to cry out, but succeed only in filling my mouth with dirty plastic.

  A wire tie looped through the base of the bag and dug into my neck, but I managed to work my fingers underneath, buying myself a few small gasps of air. Then the wire was twisted into a crude knot and pulled taut, cutting ribbons of skin from my fingers and slicing into my bruised neck.

  I struggled to get my clumsy fingers underneath the wire, desperate to free myself from the plastic bag, already airless and humid.

  Rippling pain washed through my body like a current of freezing water. I was dimly aware of the crackle of electric discharge. I slumped, semi-conscious, and someone caught me beneath the arms. My head scraped the pavement as I choked on a mouthful of plastic.

  My assailant deposited me unceremoniously at the base of a wall. The world was dim, and qu
iet, as if my ears were filled with cotton. Through the bag, someone seized me by my ears, and then slammed the back of my head against the wall. It didn’t hurt at all, but the sound reminded me of an egg cracking, and for obscure reasons, I wanted to sob. The plastic worked its way so far into my mouth that I gagged on it. My assailant drove my head into the wall again.

  There was a dark interval of indeterminate time.

  Someone tore the bag from my head, depriving me of the looming oblivion of suffocation. I retained sufficient live brain cells to resent that intervention. I rolled onto my back, and was kicked in the teeth for my troubles.

  Jenny Frost’s face shown like a full moon as chewed furiously on her gum. Elijah Pickman watched with a look of distaste prominently stamped across his face. Jenny grabbed me by the ear, her skin sticky with dried sweat and hot as a furnace. Drugs and excitement enlarged her pupils, while unnoticed tears ran from the corners of bloodshot eyes. She smirked at me, and then spat in my face.

  “Sorry now, fucker?”

  ***

  “I wanted the opportunity to have a talk.”

  “There are simpler ways, you know.”

  That seemed to be news to him.

  “Perhaps. Any method held its own complications, I imagine.”

  “Kidnapping, though…”

  “Yes. I apologize, then, if there is something I should apologize for.”

  “Accepted. Can I go now?”

  “Not quite yet.”

  I couldn’t see a thing. Coils of nylon rope wrapped tightly around my arms and legs and attached me firmly to a chair. I tested my bonds, and found very little play. After a ride of uncertain length in the trunk of a car, I had arrived here blindfolded and bound, covered in bruises from Jenny Frost’s abuse.