Mother of Crows: Daughters of Arkham - Book 2

by David Rodriguez

  Nate paused at the rent that the tree had torn in the wall. He peered inside, shining his flashlight through. There was some kind of furniture in there, probably pews, but Abby couldn't get a clean look.

  "It's in good repair," Nate said. "Someone's keeping it up. They'd have to, with that hole in the ceiling."

  "What is it?"

  "I dunno. Maybe a meeting house. I bet you anything the Daughters of Arkham came here on Halloween night."

  She shivered. She couldn't imagine Constance and the other society women coming out to this place, and yet it made perfect sense. They hadn't been at the house, but they had definitely struck out from there; first passing through that weird, throat-like tunnel, then into these primeval woods, and finally into this place that might be older than Harwich Hall itself.

  What had they been doing?

  Nate paused. "Did you hear that?" he whispered.

  She was about to ask, 'Hear what?' but then she heard it, too.

  Breathing.

  The sound was woven in with the wind. The creature was smart enough to time its breaths to mask them amongst the ambient noise. And whatever it was, it was large.

  She felt its attention on them again. She knew now why she felt unwelcome here. These woods, these wild places, belonged to that thing. She and Nate were interlopers, and the oppressive and heavy hunger of the creature's gaze was measuring them. Judging them.

  Every one of Abby's instincts screamed at her to flee, but she forced the impulse down. Fear was weakness, and weakness was certain death. If they ran, they would be chased. The creature-though it was difficult to think of it as a creature; it felt too big, too old, to be constrained by so mortal a word-was making its decision. Food or not food?

  "Nate," she whispered. "Follow me. Move quickly. But don't run. We need to get back to the tunnel. Don't run. Do you understand me? Do not run."

  Nate nodded. Abby turned and began to stroll back down the path, and Nate waited the eternity of five Mississippis before he, too, started to move. Just like that, the power between them changed hands and it was Nate tethered to Abby, following her every move.

  Abby measured her steps carefully and kept her eyes on the thicket that would funnel them into the passage. She could smell something on the wind, like the fleshy stink of a butcher shop on a hot day mixed with the pungent tang of an animal's cage. It was subtle enough that she could almost deny its existence. She could almost convince herself that it just a part of the forest that she was smelling, but she knew it was more than that. It was the creature's odor. She had picked up the Watcher's scent.

  Again she fought the urge to run. The passage was so close, and even though it didn't seem safe, she knew for a fact that it would be. The woods belonged to the Watcher, but the tunnel had been shaped by human hands. It was a civilized place. The stone marked the border of the domain where the Watcher ruled. Abby counted to herself between steps, keeping her tread steady. She could hear Nate's shallow, panicked breathing behind her, obscenely interwoven with the creature's heavier breath.

  The path twisted once, and then twice, and she saw the entryway, partly hidden behind a few rocks. It was close now. She knew if she turned she would see it, looming and towering over Nate. Her imagination gave it many arms, long and thin with curved claws tipped in jaundiced yellow. Its eyes were red and multiplied over a deformed skull, like a spider. As long as she kept from turning around, it would stay where it was.

  Its breath tickled her neck. She wanted to flinch, to hunch her shoulders. She couldn't understand how it was looming over both her and Nate, but it was. It was shadowing the both of them.

  The passage was only a few feet ahead. She wanted to sprint the last miniscule distance, but she couldn't. It would kill Nate as soon as she did, and it would catch her anyway. Nothing could beat this thing in a race. She had to play by its strange rules-the rules of childhood monsters. The rules of carpets made of lava. It abided by those rules. Abby felt certain of it.

  She stepped into the cool darkness, and as the shadow closed over her, she felt the creature vanish. It was still out there, but it was off her shoulders, and its breath no longer wheezed in her ear. Nate stepped up next to her and let out a shaky breath. She closed his hand in hers and felt him shaking. He might have been crying, but she didn't shame him by asking. Without thinking, she stepped close to him and pulled him into an embrace. He clutched at her, burying his face in her neck and taking choking breaths. He shuddered and drew strength from her as she stroked his hair and murmured nonsense.

  "What was that?" he whispered.

  "I don't know, Nate."

  She didn't let him go. Not yet.

  "I don't know."

  39

  The Suspect

  Abby found the story in the same place as the last one: hidden, as though the town might have already forgotten the murders at the clinic. As the crime receded into the past, the rumors grew more and more lurid. Abby heard many of them at school and she would have laughed if she could find anything funny in the deaths of three women. The details that people imagined just weren't grisly enough.

  The Arkham Police Department had made an arrest. A drifter named Duncan Koons had been caught with the murder weapon and identifications belonging to all three victims. According to the article, the case was open and shut, and the police were confident that Koons would be convicted after a perfunctory trial.

  There was one problem: Abby had never seen this man before in her life.

  Abby stared at the picture of Koons in the paper. He was a pudgy man with a bald head and a baby face. His thinning hair hung around his head in a wispy cloud. Though the picture was only from the neck up, Abby could imagine the rest of him: an Army surplus jacket, or even better, a tweed blazer gone filthy from life on the street; a gut hanging over his belt from eating cheap junk food; stubby legs in pants gone ragged at the cuffs. If he had shoes, they would be sneakers repaired with newspaper, cardboard, and tape.

  She tried to conjure him in the clinic. If she studied his face long enough, he might suddenly appear there in her memory. He'd be clutching an axe-these sorts of men invariably had axes-and there would be a spray of blood over that lumpy, shapeless face of his. He might even be smiling, but his teeth would be destroyed by meth and liquor.

  No matter how much she concentrated, he did not appear in her memories. Duncan Koons was a stranger, and she had no doubt he was innocent. She thought of Chief Stone and Stephanie Hill at Thanksgiving dinner, and her mother's date with Chief Stone.

  She snatched up her laptop and stormed out of her bedroom. She found her mother sitting in the lounge with a James Patterson hardback open on her lap. That made Abby even angrier. How could she be reading when she'd just condemned a man to die?

  "What's this?" Abby said. She set her laptop down, just shy of a slam, and pointed one quivering finger at the screen.

  "What's what, dear?" Constance said.

  "This. Him!"

  Constance turned to the computer as though she was seeing it for the first time. She squinted just a bit at the screen, and Abby took savage joy in her perfect mother showing the first signs of her age. "That is the man who committed the murders at the clinic."

  "No, he didn't!"

  "The police say he did. They say they have all the evidence they need for a conviction."

  "You sure know a lot about that."

  Here, Constance paused. Abby felt the tension drawing out between them like a taut line, ready to be cut in two. "What exactly are you saying, Abigail?"

  On another day, Abby might have quailed and ceded the fight to her mother. Not today. "You know exactly what I'm saying, Mother. The police are framing this poor man for something he didn't do!"

  "Poor man?" Constance laughed. It was a brittle, almost hysterical sound. "Do you even know who this man is? He is a criminal. A petty criminal doing what he can to hurt the people of Arkham."

  "But he didn't kill Dr. Collins! He didn't do any of this!"

&n
bsp; "He's a thief. He's been to prison." Constance stage-whispered the last word as though prison were contagious.

  "He didn't kill anyone."

  "Do you know that? For certain? The police say he did it. They have all the evidence they need."

  "Maybe I should go talk to Stephanie Hill. Or I could email CNN or something."

  Constance set the book aside, and the thread between them thrummed, vibrating a frosty chill into Abby's body. She had never before felt as though she were in actual physical danger from her mother until that moment. Constance's face might as well have been a porcelain mask as she stood.

  "You will speak to no one, Abigail. Let's not forget why you were in that clinic to begin with." She paused, letting that sink in. Then: "This man committed the crime, and we have no way of knowing any different because you and I were not there."

  Constance watched her daughter. Abby withered under her gaze, feeling disappointment and anger radiating from her mother in tangible waves. Finally, Constance left the room.

  Abby stayed there, shaking, though whether from rage or fear she didn't know. Probably both. She did know one thing: Duncan Koons was innocent, and she was going to prove it.

  40

  Cake

  Eleazar Grant was only important in the abstract. Sindy liked him. At times, she even told herself she might consider loving him, but she knew that feeling was only temporary. No one ever married their high school boyfriend. Or, at least, she was not going to be one of those people. She planned to have fun with him until she lost interest and then she'd move along.

  And then Hester Thorndike had given her the recipe for devotion. Try as she might, Sindy could not get the old woman's words out of her head. Whenever she closed her eyes, she could see Hester's clear green eyes boring into her as she told her the secret. A single drop of blood. As time went on, the phrase took on the quality of a prayer.

  She didn't want devotion from Eleazar, but she had to know if she could get it. The promise of that kind of power was mesmerizing.

  As the days passed and her blood hummed with the phrase, she knew she had to do it. She didn't worry that it might be a bad idea. In fact, her only concern was that it might not work.

  A week before Christmas, she looked up a recipe for gingerbread cupcakes and added all the ingredients to the household shopping list. The next afternoon, she found everything in the cupboards. She didn't know which of the servants had gone to the store, or which one had lugged the bags into the house, or which one had reorganized the spice rack. It didn't matter. As far as she was concerned, groceries always appeared in the house like magic.

  Baking for her boyfriend felt like a serious step in her relationship with Eleazar. Sindy wasn't a natural baker, and she would never get onto Top Chef, but she knew everything needed to taste good and look cute. She took her time, checking and rechecking her measurements.

  She looked down at the bowl as she finished mixing everything together. The batter was a deep, earthy brown, with a subtly sweet scent. Maybe it was better to just spoon it into the cups and shake off Hester's words like a bad dream...

  As she picked up her spatula, she felt a pang of regret. Even if Eleazar had no reaction at all, then that wasn't a waste. She'd know that what Hester told her had been a lie.

  She had to know.

  A needle waited for her, gleaming on the white countertop. She'd taken it from a dusty pincushion in the parlor drawer, and in here, its presence overwhelmed the entire room. Sindy picked it up and watched the light play off the point as she held the index finger of her left hand over the batter. She was afraid of the pain, but she was far more afraid of the power she felt.

  That power wasn't inside her, not exactly. It was all around her but shut out, as though it had been locked away on the other side of a door. Holding the needle in her hand now, she felt like that door had opened. The power flowed into her and filled her entire body with a glimmering insistence. It demanded release.

  Sindy pricked her finger and watched as a ruby-colored droplet of blood welled up around the needle. Turning her hand, she allowed the droplet to fall to the batter. As it fell, she felt the power follow it, like it was a lightning bolt and she was a conductor. Her muscles ached as though she had run a great distance. Her vision went red before the kitchen once again swam into view. She didn't know when she'd done it, but her finger was in her mouth. She sucked away the little bit of coppery blood, then covered her fingertip with a band aid.

  She stirred the batter once. The blood had vanished, but she knew it was there. She could feel it.

  She spooned the batter into cupcake liners, baked a whole sheet, waited for them to cool, and then frosted them. When they were finished, she arranged them into a basket and went out into the winter cold.

  A rind of snow covered everything. The roads were clear, with pools of salt soaking the ice up. Sindy's breath was a white plume as she clipped in the direction of the Grant household. She was bundled up, and her skin burned pleasantly in the few places she hadn't protected from the wind. After the heat and closeness of the kitchen, she felt refreshed but the secret in the cupcakes put a spring in her step that the winter air could not.

  In another town, Eleazar Grant's house might have been huge. It was a two-story colonial with more space than he and his father needed. In Arkham, where the homes were either sprawling mansions or rickety matchboxes, the Grant house was one of the few outliers.

  Eleazar's father Elijah answered the door. He looked a lot like his son, except his perfectly-styled, blonde hair had gone almost white, and he had fine crinkles around his eyes and mouth. Sindy thought that Elijah Grant might be the most attractive man she had ever met. She always had a tough time talking to him without her cheeks lighting up.

  "Hello there, Sincere," Mr. Grant said. "Come in out of the cold."

  If anyone else had called her by her full name, Sindy would have cringed inwardly and grimaced outwardly. But when Elijah Grant said it, her knees threatened to buckle and she felt a warm flush on her cheeks again.

  He stepped aside, calling up the stairs, "Eleazar, your young lady is there."

  Sindy liked being called a young lady. She looked up as Eleazar came down to the landing. He smiled when he saw her, like the sun momentarily breaking through a cloudy day.

  "What do you have there?" Mr. Grant asked.

  Sindy moved the cloth she had over her basket, and suddenly felt like Little Red Riding Hood. There were no wolves or grandmothers around, at least. She held up the basket for inspection. "Cupcakes."

  "They look delicious," Mr. Grant said.

  "They're for Eleazar."

  "Lucky him. You two kids have fun." He wandered into the other room, and Sindy heard the television come on. An announcer said something about sports and she tuned out.

  "Cupcakes?" Eleazar asked from the landing.

  "Uh-huh. I thought I'd bake you something for the holiday."

  The smile broke through again. "Guess you'd better come up then."

  Sindy felt two things then. On one hand, there was the pure and honest affection she felt for him and the joy he was taking in the fact that she'd baked for him. On the other, she was detached, wondering what effect, if any, the cupcakes would have. She held both of these feelings within her at the same time, and both swelled as she watched him.

  She went up the stairs and met him at the top. She leaned into her boyfriend and kissed him deeply. She loved how he kissed. He was sensitive and forceful, and his tongue was quite agile. He took her by the hand and led her to his room. It was dark, and had an earthy smell that Sindy associated with teenage boys. Most of the walls were covered with pictures and posters. Most of the floor was covered with dirty clothes.

  "So, cupcakes, huh?" He turned around.

  Sindy blushed and nodded. She gave him the basket without thinking of the drop of blood she'd added to the batter. Eleazar uncovered the cupcakes and raised his eyebrows. "They look great."

  "Gingerbread with pepperm
int frosting. I found the recipe on a website."

  He selected one and put the basket down on his chair. He raised it, as though toasting her, and took a big bite.

  He looked to be on the edge of exploding into a smile, but then his face just seemed to explode. There was no sound, and no spray of blood and brain matter. His flesh just came apart in dark, staticky shards that shot away from him and melted into the back of a writhing shadow. In an instant, he was no longer eating the cupcake with his normal (and, in Sindy's opinion, quite kissable) lips. His mouth was a horrid, circular hole that was ringed with curved teeth. His tongue-at least a foot long-snaked out and swirled around his mouth cavity. His pretty eyes faded into bloodless, white orbs. His skin turned slimy and dark.

  Worst of all, he still seemed to be smiling.

  Sindy was paralyzed. She wanted to scream. She wanted to release the awful pressure building inside her as though she, too, were ready to explode into an inhuman monster. She found she had no breath. The air had been squeezed out of her. There wasn't even enough to move her body. She was frozen. No force on earth could have moved her.

  "What's wrong, Sin?" the thing asked.

  That was enough. Like a hammer through stained glass, she was broken, but free. The shriek that tore from her throat rattled the windows. Even the monster recoiled, though she wouldn't remember that detail until much later as she asked herself how many times she had kissed that horrible mouth. Right now, the fear was enough.

  She ran out of the room, shot down the stairs, and burst out of the house. She heard Mr. Grant say something behind her, but she could not turn. She was terrified that he had turned into the same kind of creature as his son, and she could not take a second transformation on top of the first.

  She ran. She had to get as far away from Grant house as she could. She wasn't certain she could ever feel safe again, but the blind animal panic that consumed her, that suffused her tissues, demanded only that she run.