“Could you be any more doom-and-gloom?” Conrad complained. “I’m already sour enough on this whole idea without your naysaying, all right?”
I agreed with Casey. I could feel the iron of this place tickling the back of my mind, and its whisper didn’t even cover the snuffling and scraping I could hear in every patch of darkness, tangible reminders that we could be set upon at any moment by nightjars, ghouls, or worse things that had made it through the cracks from the Thorn Land.
Nothing made a move, which only ratcheted my nerves tighter as we reached the gates of the Asylum. In the distance, I could hear the dull tolling of the bells in St. Oppenheimer’s, as I always used to when I’d visited. Only now they were discordant and hadn’t stopped ringing, as if a giant funeral were going on.
In a way, I supposed it was.
The gates in the fence surrounding the asylum were off their hinges, one bent nearly in half, as if a giant had folded it like a piece of paper. That didn’t bode well, but I tried not to panic. Just because the gates were open didn’t mean anything had breached the asylum itself. Everyone in there could still be fine. Likely agitated, as they wouldn’t have had sedatives in close to a week, but fine. I hoped.
I could see from where we stood that the main doors were shut, yet the massive clockwork locks that kept the place from spilling lunatics into the street were open, and the steps were covered with paper files and office supplies. I looked up. A few papers were still caught in the bars of the upper-floor windows, flapping sadly like dying doves.
That doesn’t mean anything, I insisted to myself again. Surely the doctors and nurses had fled. There might have even been a patient rebellion. The doors were shut. I didn’t see any corpses or hear any screaming. In this situation, crazy as it sounded even in my own head, the silence and desolation were good signs.
“Well?” Dean stood beside me. “We going in?”
I didn’t reply, not able to articulate what I was thinking without sounding as crazy as the patients beyond the walls. I took one step through the wrecked gates, then another, and let that be my answer. I half expected them to slam behind me, even in their ruined state. Going into the asylum never felt like anything other than walking into the jaws of a beast.
“I’ll watch your backs,” Casey said. “I ain’t going in there with the loonies.”
I waved her off, not surprised. Casey was a survivor, and survivors knew when to hide rather than rush ahead. That much I’d learned from Cal.
I stopped on the first step, patients’ charts and photographs crumpling under my boots. I’d waited so long to come back here, and now I could feel myself shaking inside my clothes. The truth about what had become of Nerissa was just beyond the doors, and yet I wanted nothing more than to turn and run. Where, I didn’t know. Just away. I didn’t, though, because Conrad was staring at me, daring me to admit this was a bad idea, and because I didn’t want to show Dean just how scared I was of finding out the truth. Good or bad, I was going to have to own up to my mother about what I’d done when I let Tremaine trick me into breaking the Gates, and I couldn’t imagine her reaction. Just that it would be bad and would probably involve a lot of screaming at me.
If she was even in there.
If she was even alive.
Panic like this hadn’t clutched me since I’d first left the city. My shoulder began to throb again—as it had when the leviathan had appeared.
The shoggoth venom was reacting to something beyond the doors.
I froze in place as the doors yawned open seemingly on their own. A dozen pale white paws, puckered and with a greenish cast like the skin of a corpse, gripped the walls. The ghouls’ snouts were long, longer than Cal’s when he wasn’t wearing his human shape, and their claws were pure black. They were part of another nest. One that was a lot more comfortable in daylight than most ghouls I’d run into who weren’t Cal.
I wanted to swear, or scream, but all that made it out of my mouth was a light squeak, like a mouse’s. I didn’t even dare look to see if Conrad and Dean were still with me. Any movement could provoke a ghoul.
“Mmm,” the ghoul in the lead purred. “A delivery. I love it when the meat walks right up to your front door.”
Before I could move, the ghoul tucked its legs and sprang, clearing the steps in one bound. I barely had time to flinch in expectation of its weight on my chest and its teeth in my skin before Dean tackled me, slamming me out of the way.
We landed in the gravel at the foot of the stairs as the rest of the ghouls burst forth from the asylum, howling in anticipation of a meal.
Dean hauled me up. “Run,” he growled in my ear. “For your life.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Conrad and Casey head the other way, toward Uptown. There was no argument from me. I snatched Dean’s hand. In the face of horrors, he’d thrown himself into the line of fire with no regard for his own safety.
I didn’t have time to even hope Conrad would be all right. The ghouls were hot on our heels, their screaming bringing more and more of them out of hiding, spilling out of broken shop windows and shadowed alleys and an open sewer grate in the center of the street.
We ran. We ran until it felt like there was fire and razors in my chest in place of air. Ran so fast that my feet didn’t even catch in the pockmarks left by missing cobblestones.
Dean whipped his head back, then forward again. “Shit” he gasped, and when I looked I saw that the entire street had become a churning, rushing mass of bodies, white and blue and corpse-gray all the way down to rotted, decomposing greenish-black. There were hundreds of the ghouls, fighting and clawing to be at the front of the pack, and their screaming was the only thing I could hear over my own heartbeat.
We hit the top of Dunwich Lane, the center of despicable goings-on back when Lovecraft had been the Lovecraft I knew. Now Dunwich Lane’s red-light district was a smoking, ash-gray ruin. Fire could have started in any one of the dive bars or brothels by the river, and it had chewed on the shabby neighborhood’s bones as surely as the ghouls were going to chew on ours if they caught us.
Still we ran, until I couldn’t feel myself, except for my straining breath, and could barely see except for a tiny tunnel straight ahead.
We weren’t going to make it. I could smell the foul, orchid-sweet stench of the ghouls, and before me I could see the flash of the river. We would have a choice in a moment: jump in and freeze, or stand on the bank and be torn limb from limb, turned into dinner for the horrific and hungry citizens of this new Lovecraft.
The last houses on the street were on pilings out over the river, listing dangerously and plastered with warnings that they were condemned. The street ended at a crumbling wall, and beyond there was nothing but the river. My heart sank.
As Dean and I ran toward the wall, I heard a great whirring from overhead, the sound of a zeppelin’s fans. I looked up, thinking Draven had finally caught up with us. That would be the grand finale to this wretched day.
It wasn’t Draven’s black craft, though—it was a smaller ship, the balloon a dark green and the cabin underneath made of polished wood trimmed with brass that gleamed even in the smoky sunlight. The craft banked sharply over the river and a ladder extended from the cabin hatch.
“You!” bellowed a voice made sharp and metallic by the horn of an aethervox. “You two on Dunwich Lane! Grab the ladder and get on board!”
The ladder drifted into range. I looked to Dean, and he nodded vigorously. Whoever was in the dirigible, he was better than what was closing in on us, no question. I grabbed the ladder’s wooden rungs and leather straps and climbed as best I could while it swayed in the wind. Dean jumped on behind me, and the dirigible rose into the air, away from the ravening horde of ghouls.
“Any others alive in the city?” the voice bellowed at us.
“North!” I shouted, gesturing in the direction Conrad and Casey had run.
Another ladder dropped from the other side of the dirigible, and we swooped over the grounds of
Christobel Asylum in a hard turn, toward what had been Uptown and the Academy grounds. From above I could see that the back wing of the asylum had been gutted by fire, and ghouls were scampering across what had once been a garden where the patients could walk in warm weather. Half-chewed bodies in the asylum-issued gray pajamas lay like discarded toys on the flagstones, but from what I could see, my mother wasn’t one of them.
That was it, then. The truth I’d known in the back part of my mind, the black part that only understood logic and odds, fell home with a hammer blow.
My mother wasn’t there. Nobody human was. If she’d managed to survive, she was alone in the city, adrift.
We swooped low across the mazelike streets leading to Banishment Square and Ravenhouse, the Proctors’ headquarters in Lovecraft.
Conrad’s movements were easy to pick out among the stately granite buildings. He was alone, cornered near Ravenhouse’s back wall.
My stomach flipped from the abrupt change in altitude as the dirigible lowered, and I waved frantically at him. “Grab the ladder!”
Conrad jumped, then did as I’d said and clung tightly as the dirigible rose. The ladders clanked against the metal parts of the hull as they retracted into the hatches of the craft, and I scrambled into the cabin along with Dean.
“You all right?” I asked Conrad, who’d climbed in from the other side. He nodded, patting himself down.
“Mostly. That was a hell of a close call.”
“Where’s Casey?” I asked.
“Dunno,” Conrad panted. “Lost her in the back alleys. She was rabbiting back toward Nephilheim last I saw. Not ghoul food yet.”
He rubbed his arms, shivering. “I tried to stay with her, Aoife.…”
“It couldn’t be helped,” I reassured him. “Nobody expects you to be ghoul lunch.” I patted him awkwardly on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, Conrad.”
“And why not? This is a Proctor ship isn’t it?” he grumbled. “We’re under arrest.”
“I have no idea who picked us up,” I said. “But I doubt they’re Proctors.”
He managed a weak smile, which I returned. Never mind that I had less than no clue who this airship belonged to and why the pilot had rescued us.
I examined our surroundings, hoping to make a guess on that score. We were in a narrow cargo bay at the aft of the dirigible, and there were no hints, just a few boxes tied down in a corner, devoid of any markings.
“Aoife’s right. I don’t think it’s Proctors,” Dean said. “Proctors probably would’ve just left us to get eaten. Less work for them that way.”
“Good point,” Conrad said. He got up and brushed himself off. “Come on. Let’s see what kind of degenerates we’ve hooked up with.”
I went to the hatch that led to the rest of the dirigible to see what I could find out. Best case, we’d been picked up by pirates or smugglers who also hated the Proctors. Worst, we’d been picked up by pirates or smugglers who didn’t hate the Proctors enough to turn down a quick buck they could earn by handing us over.
I tried the hatch, which swung open easily enough. At least we weren’t locked in. I stepped through it before Dean or Conrad could protest. A ladder led up one level to a deck, swaying aether lamps lighting my way as the airship climbed at a steep angle, passing through turbulence in the clouds.
The passenger deck was richly appointed, like the interiors of the private craft wealthy families in Lovecraft once used to fly from their mansions to New Amsterdam or their vacation homes in Maine. Lush velvet covered the corridor walls, and all the fittings were brass. When I peeked above deck I saw rich wood and bookshelves lining the room. Furniture bolted to the floor creaked gently as the craft banked, and I saw a plethora of charts spread out on the wide dining table. I’d never seen anything like it in real life—the only airship I’d been on previously was a repurposed war buggy, stripped to the bare bones. This was the sort of craft I’d always dreamed of flying on when I was just another girl at the Academy. I was sad I couldn’t explore it now, but I did take in all the details to remember later, when I had the time.
“Hello?” I said cautiously, braced for a confrontation.
“Hello!” A blond woman stuck her head in from another compartment and hurried over to me. “We’re so glad you’re all right!”
“We?” I said, backing up in surprise when she reached out her hand. She went with the cabin—immaculately curled hair, a traveling skirt and boots that probably cost more money than I’d been given to live on in an entire year as a ward of the City. Her ivory blouse was pressed, and a blue stone brooch sparkled at the collar.
“You don’t have to be afraid of me, Aoife,” she said, attempting a friendly smile that looked slightly out of place on her perfect porcelain features. She wasn’t much taller than I was, but there was a sureness to her posture and a set to her delicate face that told me she was used to being listened to and obeyed.
“How do you know who I am?” I started casting around for a weapon. Something not good was definitely happening here.
“Aoife …,” she started, but I snatched an animal leg bone from its display hook and waved it at her.
“You stay away from me!” I didn’t know how the woman knew my name, but her perfect facade didn’t inspire trust. Beautiful things were usually ugly under the surface, in my experience, and I wasn’t about to trust this one.
“Aoife!” Another voice called from above, and I looked up to see a tall, rangy figure with a shock of white at his temples standing on a balcony.
I felt my body go slack, and the bone tumbled from my hand as I stared at the figure, shocked. “Dad?”
My father looked much different from when I’d glimpsed him in the jail cell. There he’d been masked, with deep half-moons under his eyes and his hair wild. Now he wore a natty safari outfit similar in color and style to the blond woman’s clothes, canvas pants held up by leather suspenders, a linen shirt open at the collar and boots shined within an inch of their lives. He looked every bit the wealthy gentleman my mother had always told me he was.
“Yes, it’s me,” he said. He descended the curving brass staircase that led from the bridge. He held up a hand, as if to still a temperamental child. “Calm down.”
“I …” I took a second look around the airship. It really was a marvelous craft, the cabin more like a stately apartment than the interior of an airship. “What’s going on?” I said. It was a lame response, but it was the only one that came to mind.
“I’ll explain it all as soon as we’re clear of the city and those damn Proctor sweeps,” my father answered. “Now I’ve got to get back to the helm.” He gestured to the blond woman. “Val, make sure Aoife is comfortable, and tell her friends they can come up from the hold, will you?”
The woman stooped and picked up the bone I’d liberated, setting it gently back in its display rack. “Of course, Archie.”
I stood awkwardly in the center of the dark night sky–blue carpet, feeling both underdressed and acutely aware of how filthy I was after the two days of hard travel from Windhaven. I didn’t know who the woman was or why she was being instructed to take care of me. I had no idea what was going on, and I didn’t like that. Confusion was my least favorite state.
The woman—Val—gestured me into a leather wing chair, which was bolted to the floor, like everything else. “Would you like some tea?”
“All right,” I said, a bit in shock. The two of them were acting as if rescuing Dean, Conrad and me from a horde of ravening ghouls was the most usual thing in the world. Or at least, not strange enough to interrupt afternoon tea.
I watched quietly as Val went to an aethervox panel in the far wall and pressed one of the intricately worked silver-and-brass buttons. “You two can come up now,” she said sweetly. “Aoife is fine and we’re not going to hurt you.”
She went over to a steam hob built into the bookcases and set a silver teakettle on it. “You’ve had quite a journey,” she said to me. “You must be worn out.”
<
br /> “I’m sorry,” I answered, shutting my eyes briefly in an attempt to reconcile what had almost happened in Lovecraft with my new opulent surroundings and the gentle hum of the airship’s fans. “Who are you, exactly?”
“Oh, how rude of me!” She fluttered her hands around that brooch. “I’m Valentina Crosley. I’m an associate of your father’s.”
“And this?” I gestured at the airship cabin as Dean and Conrad poked their heads through the hatch. Dean relaxed visibly when he saw that I was in one piece. His hand came out of the pocket where he kept his knife, but he trained a wary eye on Valentina.
“This is your father’s craft, the Munin,” said Valentina. “It belonged to my father, but now it’s Archie’s.”
“It’s very … nice,” I said cautiously. It was too nice—I clearly didn’t belong here, and neither did Dean. Conrad was the only one who appeared at ease. I wondered if his composure would last when he saw our father. Conrad had always taken it harder that Archie had left us with our mother.
“I’m pleased to meet you,” he told Valentina, seeming calm enough. “There were some letters in my father’s house from you. Archie and I never spoke about you, but I’d hoped we’d meet someday.”
Valentina blinked at him, staring for a moment, and I stared as well. Where was Conrad’s sullen rage at being abandoned? The outrage that Archie had clearly taken up with another woman? I was feeling both in spades, but my brother seemed pleased as punch to be here.
Valentina recovered inside of a second and held out her hand. “And it’s really a pleasure to meet you at last, Conrad. Your father has told me so much about you and your sister both.”
I shot a glance toward the bridge while pleasantries were being exchanged. My father stood alone, silhouetted against the glass. I rose and climbed up the brass steps and stood at the lip of the bridge, feeling awkward but needing to see him, to speak to him again and convince myself this was really happening. How to start a conversation like that? Why did you save me from the Proctors? Where have you been? Why did you leave our family behind?
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