The Secrets of Blood and Bone

by Rebecca Alexander

  “Let me do more research. Let me find out what Gina has discovered.”

  “Yes.” She drew a deep breath. “Find out more. But when you do, I’m coming with you.”

  Chapter 32

  In the sovereign Court of Parliament at Dole in the territories of Espagny, Salvange, Courchapon and the neighboring villages, has often been seen a were-wolf, who, it is said, has already seized and carried off several little children. The said Court, desiring to prevent any greater danger, has permitted those who are abiding or dwelling in the said places, to assemble with pikes, halberts, arquebuses, and sticks, to chase and to pursue the said were-wolf in every place where they may find or seize him; to tie and to kill, without incurring any pains or penalties….Given at the meeting of the Court on the thirteenth day of the month of September, 1573.

  —COURT OF PARLIAMENT AT DOLE, Franche Comte, 1573

  The great stone steps that I had so admired upon my arrival were difficult to traverse by moonlight, and I stumbled down them and raced across the grass. Dew was disturbed as I did so, and I cursed it as it left a trail to be followed in the pale light. I scared rabbits under the hedges of the maze, startling myself into veering onto one of the gravel paths. Ahead, the safety of the forest beckoned. All the time, I was deafened by the toc-toc of my heart, my mouth filled with the metallic taste of my own blood where I must have bitten my tongue or lips while they were numbed. I turned onto the forest path, then forced myself to wait there and think like a man.

  I was to be hunted by people who had thrown off humanity for animal bloodlust. How could I use that to my advantage? I felt within my shirt for the pitiful supplies I had thought helpful for a hunt. Wary of meeting a wolf, as I had once had an encounter with a pack in Poland, I carried a small pouch of magical powders in a pocket, some of which might aid me. I had the talisman of earth with me, and—rubbing my fingers across its inscription—one of fire. I was carrying a small sheathed dagger in my waistband and my sketches and loose notes were slid within my shirt and secured by a linen band.

  My knowledge of sorcery was still young and not as developed as my mentor’s, Dr. Dee. But I knew some tricks that gentleman did not. I spat into my hand, rubbed the bloody spittle into the forest entrance gatepost, then reached in for my sulfur mix and dusted my shoes with it. Thus might I be granted invisibility from dogs, if they used them. Perhaps they would be fooled into going into the forest. I slipped then, not into the woods at all, but along the boundary of the lawn and beyond, into the pleasure gardens.

  Here short hedges offered me no shadows, but I hoped the company would not be looking out of windows on that side of the house. With many candles lit within, perhaps they would not see me crossing the formal acres, and into the kitchen garden beyond.

  Within one corner was a heap of manure I had smelled on my tour about the grounds not a day ago. Here was something to mix with the powders I held, to confuse scenting by dogs or the brute that Enrico had become. I winced at the stink, but rubbed some of the freshest manure into my palm with the asafetida powder and wiped it upon my hands and boots. These traces would confuse and intoxicate a follower. I have seen it repel dogs with their sensitive noses, and escaped the stocks several times in my youth by the subterfuge.

  There was no sound of pursuit, but I looked at the rising moon and cursed it for its silver light, clear through the sky.

  Finally I crept along the wall to the corner, stepped upon a water barrel there, clambered up the drain pipe that fed it, and pulled myself onto the top. I have no head for heights and could see little upon the other side but forest, but lowered myself by my hands until I hung in the darkness, then dropped.

  Chapter 33

  PRESENT DAY: LAKE DISTRICT

  The witches are away and life creeps over the cleared areas, exploiting the fresh ground, the patches of light, the damp soil where rain has been able to get in. Mice and voles scurry after fallen seeds, watched by a kestrel hanging in the wind overhead.

  Sadie turned over another paperback in the bookshop, and read the blurb. She couldn’t concentrate, her recent collapse had left her with a tickly cough and the local shopkeepers were all fussing over her. Everywhere Maggie went—she must remember to call Maggie Grandma—people asked about Sadie in whispers like she was five. She put the book back and lifted another one. Tales of the Supernatural Lake District. She smiled as she read the first few sentences. God, if only they knew.

  Not for the first time, she wondered what she actually was. Revenant sounded like she was an animated corpse, but she knew that wasn’t right. A revenant wouldn’t walk past the chocolate and have her stomach rumble, she was sure of that. She picked a bar of chocolate with raisins and nuts in it. Maggie would frown and put it back, and pick the organic stuff, but it was worth it just to wind her up.

  She stepped aside as she heard a whirring sound behind her and turned to see Callum in his electric wheelchair. He looked as pale and sickly as she felt.

  “Sasha? Or is it Tara?”

  Oh, right, the name’s Sasha again. Sadie smiled. “Hi, Callum.”

  “You look terrible. Are you OK?”

  “Relapse.” She shrugged, it was the best she could think of and anyway, it was sort of true. “How about you?”

  “Chest infection.” He smiled weakly. “What have you got there?”

  She handed him the book. “I just thought it would be funny to compare, you know, legends with what really goes on.”

  “Funny.” He twisted his mouth into something like a smile. “Only true.”

  She took the book back. “I’m sorry we haven’t found the cure yet. We are getting closer—we think we know where it is.”

  “If it’s still there.” He shrugged. “I don’t care. I don’t really want the cure if—” He paused. “The thing is, they say it’s got to be soon. I don’t want to change into—”

  She could sympathize. “Look, once you have the cure you can fight the side effects.”

  “But would I even want to?” He pressed his hands together. “My dad, he says once the Dannicks have the cure, they change. They become more focused, more aggressive. Like my mother.”

  Sadie stepped aside for an older woman with a shopping basket on wheels, and lowered her voice. “Hasn’t your dad had the cure?”

  “He’s not the Dannick, my mother is.” He pressed the joystick and the machine glided over to a stand of magazines. “She never got this dystrophy thing either; she was fine.” He waved a hand over his wasted body. “He’s a good dad, but my mother—I mean, I love her, but she’s different. Focused on the family as if we were royalty or something.”

  Sadie’s mind jumped to her own mother. Always chaotic, she had been hit hard by Sadie’s faked death, and was still drinking heavily. Sadie spoke to her every day, and thought maybe Angie was starting to pull herself together, but it was still a worry. She looked around the shop, busy with people, and wondered whether Angie would be better living in such a nice place, instead of a housing association flat in a city. “My mum struggles with my illness.”

  “She seemed OK,” he said.

  “Oh. That’s not my mum.” She couldn’t explain. “I mean, I live with Jack and all that, but she’s like my foster mother.”

  “Hello.” Maggie stepped over, a carrier bag in hand. “You must be Callum.”

  “Hi.” Callum drove his chair back to look at Maggie.

  “I’m Maggie Slee.”

  When Callum raised his eyebrow, Sadie chuckled at his expression. “Foster mother’s foster mother. Just call her Maggie.” She reeled under a sudden wave of cold. “I’d better go and sit in the car. Sorry, Callum, some other time.”

  He nodded and whirred away. Maggie put her arm around Sadie’s waist. “Put that chocolate down, I’ve got you some of the butterscotch organic ice cream.”

  Sadie registered the words but was concentrating on not throwing up. Maggie walked her to the door. She could see the car, parked a few spaces down the street. Maggie’s car ha
d the same symbols painted inside it as Jack’s, a haven of energy.

  “Oh, my book.”

  “You really want that?” Maggie took it, then felt in her coat pocket. “Here’s the keys. I won’t be a minute. Just rest quietly in the car.”

  Sadie focused on walking without wobbling. One step, two. Someone brushed past her, a woman in a hurry. She put a hand on a lamppost to get her balance, then stepped forward. One, two. Nearly there. She put her hand on her chest, over the symbols there, the burned ones stinging but releasing some of their energy. She stepped more confidently to the car, pressed the key fob, then pulled open the passenger door.

  Before she could slide onto the seat a hand reached around her waist, crushing the breath out of her. As she gasped in protest, she was lifted off her feet and carried a few feet, dropping the keys. Pushed into the backseat of a car, she turned her head to see a man she hadn’t seen before slam the door and jump into the driver’s seat. A click beside her locked the door, and her weak fingers flapped at the missing catch.

  Fear seemed to drag in the cold, and she started to panic at the thought of collapsing again. “I need my medicine,” she managed to stammer, “please, I need my medicine!”

  The man glanced at her in the rearview mirror. “I’m sorry. But my son needs his medicine, too. Maybe this will help your mother cooperate.”

  “But I’ll die—” The words failed in her throat. She started coughing, and couldn’t stop for a minute. By the time she could focus, they were already on the main road.

  “We have a doctor up at the castle. It’s only for a few hours: you’ll be fine.”

  Sadie scrubbed at the symbols on her chest to keep from throwing up. A doctor wouldn’t be able to help her now. She folded her arms over the sore marks and looked around the car. The other door had a lock on it; she could reach—but then the prospect of jumping out of a moving car at fifty miles an hour didn’t make much more sense. She searched her pockets for the small bottle Jack had pressed on her that morning, and struggled to unscrew the top. Finally it loosened, and she drank about half. It gave her a boost, and she tucked the rest into her pocket. She leaned back on the seat and took a deep breath, letting the nausea fade.

  The car was expensive, with leather seats and a purring engine that smoothly ate up the miles to Knowle Castle. She refused to engage with the driver, staring out of the window instead.

  She was as angry as scared by the time they turned into the castle drive. She had swallowed back the same mouthful of breakfast a dozen times, and was considering spraying the driver with it next time. She was shaking with cold, the effect of being out of the circles. She waited for the car to stop in sight of tourists, so she could attract attention.

  She was disappointed when he turned off onto a track marked “Private” to arrive at a small car park behind the castle, away from the tourist area. He opened her door from outside and half carried her into what appeared to be the Dannicks’ family quarters. There was a large, bright kitchen with a middle-aged woman loading a dishwasher who had just opened her mouth to speak when Sadie’s stomach cramped again. She splattered the floor and her captor’s feet, she noticed with some satisfaction.

  “Oh, Mr. Dannick, is she…” The words trailed away as Sadie, now a deadweight, was carried by the man through a corridor and up a narrow set of stairs. At the top, he pushed open a door and laid Sadie down on a single bed. She struggled to sit up, but he left the room without comment, and shut the door. A key scraped in a lock.

  Sadie closed her eyes while she fought the nausea and took long, slow breaths. Potion. She slid fingers, stiff with cold, into her jacket pocket. The bottle was still there, and she managed to drag it out, and sit up enough to finish it off. With a little warmth spreading through her, she fumbled through her other pockets for her phone. It must have fallen out in the struggle. She looked for more potion. Nothing.

  She could have screamed. But she did find a pencil that had come free with some puzzle magazine. The point was a bit blunt, the seven-hour drive from Devon had been punctuated by crosswords. But there was enough to at least draw a bit of a circle.

  She had never drawn the sigils before, but she’d lived with them for months. The floor ones were a reflection of the ones drawn—and burned into—her chest, so she started with them. Looking out of the single locked window, she could see the sun in the sky over the forest. She guessed it must be about south.

  She started by pulling up a carpet then the underlay, which was stapled to the floor. It came up with a lot of tugging, which left her feeling breathless and wobbly, as if she was drunk. Finally, she had enough of a square of floorboards to draw a small circle, just enough to sit in. She drew the first shape, then the next, pulling up the several layers she was wearing to check the orientation as best she could. On the next one the tip of the pencil broke, and she had to draw with the pencil at an angle. By the time she finished the last few symbols, she was scratching them into the varnish and dirt on the wood, but the effect was immediate. She dragged the duvet off the bed, sat on the pillow and wrapped the bedclothes around herself.

  She curled up in a little nest of bedding and let sleep overtake her.

  Chapter 34

  We were called, Dee and I, to the mystery of a creature abroad in Lithuania that seemed to hunt like a giant wolf or monster. The local people were much afraid and some would not tend to their animals after dark, which was leading to many losses of stock. We were taken to see the mutilated body of a boy of some thirteen summers, half of which was eaten away. Dee examined the remains while I stood at the door—the death had been several days ago and it was summer—but he called me in to look into the wounds. Although the amount of flesh removed and presumably eaten was prodigious, enough for a pack of wolves, the wounds were blunt and rounded. Dee was forced to conclude that the predator, God save us, might be human.

  —EDWARD KELLEY’S JOURNAL, 1584, Vilnius, Lithuania

  I landed in soft rubbish thrown over the garden wall. I found my feet, and apart from a pain in one ankle and a little discomfort in my back, was ready to run again. Beyond the villa the forests were open and soft grass grew underfoot, grazed short by rabbits or deer.

  My mind raced almost as much as my feet. My first need was to create a weapon other than my pitiful dagger, and I cast about me for a sturdy bough, but could find none. I cursed the tidy gardeners. I kept the moon, silvery overhead, always upon my left a little, in the hope that I would at some moment find the road we had ridden in upon. My breath came sobbing in my throat now as I ran, and my ankle seemed to throb with each gasp. There! The sound of shouts and the howl of the tormented man. It was answered by other shrieks and calls, I think from human throats, though I had never heard the like. The legend of man-wolves was stuck in my mind. We had investigated two such in the countries of Lithuania and Normandy, and knew the legends well. At the full moon, such men as had wolflike hearts could enchant themselves into the beasts, and would hunt that ultimate delicacy, human flesh, the legend says. In Lithuania I prayed it was just legend, although I now had no time for such terrors, half vaulting, half falling over a tree that lay in my path. Here was a branch or two in reach of my dagger. I chose a tree limb less thick than my wrist but more than my thumb, and hacked away until I could bend it back upon itself, and it split from its parent with a crack like gunpowder. More howls followed, as if in answer. I used the knife to trim it, and roughly sharpened the already ragged end. It was some four feet long and crooked, but with time I could perhaps sharpen it to a point or even attach my dagger to extend my reach.

  I looked around, my mind racing. I was not just trying to escape dogs as in a normal hunt, but humans, their senses awakened by their terrible rituals. I knew now that the impossible transformation hinted at by the panel might be truth. A slight incline led me to run down toward, I hoped, the road below. It led to boggy ground, which would hold the shape of my boot prints, and the sound of trickling water. I leaped as far as I could toward the str
eam, and my feet crunched upon the gravel with a splash. The light was blocked by trees overhead, and I stumbled in the dark, wading shin-deep in water that flowed around my skin like liquid ice.

  There, more howls, and nearer. I turned, fear making my heart thump as if it would break my ribs, and could see a flicker of yellow light between the trees. Torches. The shrieks were such as I could not believe came from a human throat. I waded upstream, the darkness making me stumble on flat stones in the water. Then, uphill onto dry ground. I was stood upon a small island, maybe a few dozen yards across, and in the darkest of shadows beneath trees leaning over the stream from each bank. I sat for a moment, catching the breath that wheezed from me, trying to be silent. A shout from downstream, and crazed laughter, then voices, man and woman alike, raised in howls like animals. Now the first splashing, coming toward me. Fleeing now for my life, careless of the noise, I raced into the stream beyond the island. I fought it until the sound of water rushing became louder, and I realized it was not the blood torrenting through my veins. A waterfall above emptied into frothy waters to the dark river. I looked back, hearing many shouts clearly now, and then what sounded like hoofbeats. Even in my terror, I was angry that they had broken their word and sought me on horseback. I waded ashore, and opened my meager supplies. I had some charcoal and saltpeter in paper packets and mixed them together. My brimstone powder was in a small pouch, and I tipped half into the powders, praying that the proportions were correct although I could barely see them. Finally, I folded the paper into a large twist the size of my hand, leaving a corner of paper wound as a tail or a fuse.

  A sound came from above the waterfall, not three yards high, then a gasp, whether from me or him I could not divine. I turned to see, crouched upon the bank above the waterfall, the form of Enrico.

  I hardly recognized him, his lips drawn back so far it was as if they had been cut off, his eyes glowing in the silver light. He threw back his head and screamed at the moon, then stepped forward upon the stones above the fall. I held the packet between my knees and struck with my tinderbox, once, twice, to catch a little dry grass I kept within. No spark ensued, perhaps flint or tinder was damp—there, upon the third strike a spark hit the tinder and I blew upon it, almost too much in my panic, so that the tiny flame wavered. Then a yellow curl of heat, and I brought the paper to the flame and caught the end alight.