Whyborne and Griffin, Books 1-3

by Jordan L. Hawk

  “You replaced Orme…to what? Keep any rumors of your existence suppressed?” If they’d had a large enough stock of spare brains, would they simply have replaced the entire town?

  “Yes.”

  “And me?”

  “Your family has much power. Influence enough to keep the humans and their machines from our diggings.”

  That bastard Elliot must have told them about me. With my brain conveniently out of the way, they’d send one of their agents abroad wearing my skin. Would Father and Stanford suffer unfortunate “accidents,” leaving me the heir to one of the largest railroads in America?

  Of course the yayhos wanted my cooperation. If I voluntarily told them all about my life, their agent would more easily pass for me. Orme’s replacement had been hasty and flawed, but it had been good enough. Mine would have to do much better, at least in the short term, to avoid arousing suspicion.

  I needed to escape—but how?

  “You’ve been here for a long time, haven’t you?” I asked, stalling frantically for time in the hope some plan would occur to me. “That is, the coal is a finite resource within the seam. Surely it must—”

  “Enough questions.” I had definitely annoyed it. “All will be answered later. Will you agree to our terms?”

  It moved closer, segmented legs flexing toward me. Its ammoniac stink made my eyes water, and I backed away, until my legs fetched up against one of the tables. I reached out to steady myself, and felt Webb’s bowler hat give beneath my hand.

  “Give me a moment to think,” I stammered, my mind reeling for some means of escape.

  “There is nothing to consider. Cooperate and learn the wonders of the universe. Do not cooperate, and your brain will be removed regardless.”

  Its feelers thrashed and squirmed as it loomed over me. I would die here, in this wretched place, and Griffin would never know what happened to me, never know how sorry I was we’d quarreled, or how much I loved him. I groped at the table behind me, even though I’d seen no weapons, in the wild hope there might be a gun or a knife hidden beneath the clothing. Instead, my fingers closed on the box of flash powder.

  I flung it onto the floor in front of the creature and closed my eyes, even as I spoke the secret name of fire.

  ~ * ~

  The searing flash of the magnesium powder showed red through my eyelids, even as I turned for the exit. Behind me, the yayho let out a tortured shriek—not the buzzing drone, but something more primal and horrid, piercing as a needle to the ear. The abomination screamed as well, and it was somehow even more awful.

  I ran, not daring to look back. How I would escape the cave, I didn’t know. My only desire, beating along with my hammering heart, was to get as far away as possible from the monster behind me.

  I ran for what seemed forever. Terror gave me the strength of the hunted animal, which flees past the point of ordinary collapse. I didn’t slow until I saw, impossibly, what seemed to be daylight ahead. There was rubble, and timbers…

  Back at the cave where the geologists had died.

  The boulder which had seemed suspicious to Christine and I had been rolled to one side, fitting into a niche, hidden before. Why the yayhos would leave their cave open, I didn’t wish to think. I’d worry about it later, once I was safely back in Threshold.

  Safely back in Threshold, with Elliot, who had willingly allied with the yayhos, and whoever—whatever—they had put in Mr. Orme’s skull. Not safe at all, really, but I had to warn Griffin and Christine, and anyone else.

  I emerged from the cave and into the fresh air. The sun had almost set. I’d lain unconscious for almost a whole day beneath the mountain.

  Which meant tonight was the new moon, when the yayhos would attack. I had only a few hours left in which to act.

  I didn’t know how much light the yayhos could tolerate, but the twilit sky was not much brighter than the phosphorescent mildew within the cavern, so I couldn’t count on it holding the creature at bay while I fled. Assuming only one might give pursuit, and not a dozen, or a hundred. How many of the beings inhabited and mined the caverns beneath Threshold Mountain, crawling through the stone like maggots in a bit of rotting meat?

  Even one might be enough to end me. I plunged recklessly down the steep slope, branches striking my face and roots seeming to reach up to trip me. I had to warn the town as soon as possible. Even now the yayhos surely gathered their forces—would they come boiling down from the cavern at my back? And what of the abominations? How many of them might be loose in the woods?

  My heart pounded frantically in my throat, and I couldn’t hear anything over the rough sound of my own breathing, save for the crunch and crack of leaves and twigs under my feet. The sun slipped even lower, and now I had difficulty making out shapes beneath the thick canopy of the trees. Even if I escaped the yayhos, I’d soon be lost, stumbling in the dark. Curse this wilderness! Why did I ever agree to leave the civilization of Widdershins? Why—

  The yayho plunged through the canopy a few yards ahead of me.

  Chapter 19

  A cry of startled terror escaped me. I tried to stop, but momentum worked against me, and I barely avoided careening right into the creature. But its clumsy wings had tangled in the thick branches, hampering its movement. As it sought to free itself, I slipped and scrambled madly along the slope, seeking to get away from it, or at least find somewhere to hide.

  There: a pair of boulders, where a single rock had been cleft in two by the long work of centuries. The yayho was considerably larger than I; perhaps I could squeeze inside where it would be unable to reach me.

  With no better plan, I scrambled into the cleft. The rough boulders scraped and tore the shoulders of my suit coat, and the odor of rotting leaves and slime rose up around me. I had to turn to the side to fit further back, jamming myself in as deep as I could.

  Once there, I froze, struggling to control my breathing. My ears strained for any sound of claws against the forest floor, or of its terrible buzzing, but I heard nothing. I felt like a mouse in its hole, waiting for the cat to either discover it or depart. Where was the thing? Had it not seen where I’d fled? Had it given up?

  It reared above me, blotting out the last of the sunlight. Belatedly, I realized it couldn’t come at me from the level ground, but I’d neglected to consider whether it could reach me from atop the boulders. Its jointed forelimbs stabbed down, and I tried to pull back, but there was no room to bend my knees. My hat was long gone; a chitinous claw tangled in my hair, drawing a sharp pain from my scalp, and it was all I could do not to scream.

  The yayho jerked back, its terrible shriek sounding for the second time in an hour. Green ichor splattered free, staining the rock and burning my eyes and nose with its fumes. For a moment, I didn’t understand what had happened. Then I beheld the thin metal blade skewering it through the throat.

  The blade wrenched loose. Gurgling horribly, the yayho sought to turn on its attacker, but the slim sword swung again and again, hacking deep into the tough flesh of its neck. When its head dangled half off, it collapsed on the edge of the crack, limbs twitching.

  Silence. Then, a light appeared, as if a lantern had been uncovered. Someone slithered off the rock, and a moment later a familiar figure appeared at the head of the cleft.

  Relief flooded through me, intense enough to make me light-headed. “Griffin!” I gasped, stumbling out to him.

  His sword cane swung up between us, the point of the blade stabbing through my shirt to rest against the skin above my heart.

  ~ * ~

  I halted instantly. “G-Griffin?”

  He stared at me, his green eyes wild in the lantern light. All the color had leached from his skin, and I felt his hand trembling through the vibrations of the steel touching my chest.

  “Don’t come any closer,” he warned, but his voice had a broken edge to it I’d never heard before. “Not until I’m sure wh-who you are.”

  Oh. Oh God. I’d gone to the woods, hadn’t I? Just like Orm
e and the Kincaids and Rider Hicks. How Griffin learned what had happened, I couldn’t guess, but he’d come to save me.

  No. He’d come to kill whatever walked around in my skin.

  I swallowed against a sudden dryness in my throat. “Griffin, please, it’s me!”

  Tears shone in his eyes, but he didn’t lower the blade. “Tell me something only Whyborne would know.”

  “I-I…” My brain locked, unable to come up with anything at all, let alone something which might satisfy him. My life was quiet and boring—what was there to say? I liked eggs for breakfast? The name of our cat? Hardly something only I could know.

  “We’re lovers,” I said, but of course Elliot knew of our relationship, so the yayhos could as well.

  He shook his head. “Not enough,” he whispered. Despair settled over his features, and the expression tore my heart and sent terror through me.

  Something only we two would know…but what? “You call me Ival.”

  “Others have heard me use the term.”

  Blast it! What could I...oh.

  “We m-made love the other night—during the storm—you licked my, er, that is, my a-anus,” I blurted, my face burning. Then a horrible thought occurred. “And if Christine is with you, for God’s sake, just skewer me now and be done with it!”

  The sword cane fell from his nerveless hand. With a soft cry, he slumped against me, his hands clutching my lapels and his face pressed against my chest. Startled, I wrapped my arms around him, and felt his shoulders heave with sobs.

  “It’s all right,” I whispered, stroking his hair. I tried to imagine what it would have been like had our positions been reversed; the mere thought of confronting someone—something—else in Griffin’s body made me feel physically ill. I held him tight, sinking to the ground so he lay half in my lap.

  “I’m sorry,” he sobbed into my vest. “I never meant to hurt you. I just w-wanted you to love me, even though I’m not good enough, even though—”

  “Shh.” The heat of tears soaked through to my skin. “You’re speaking nonsense.”

  “I’m just a farmer’s son from Kansas, who’s spent the last decade pretending he’s someone better, and you’re so far above me. I knew it even before I saw your house, knew I didn’t have anything to offer a man like you, but I love you so much, and I couldn’t…and we quarreled, and I thought—I thought I was going to have to…”

  My throat tightened and my eyes burned. “You have everything to offer me. Don’t you understand? Before you, I went through the motions of life, but I never really lived until the day you walked into the museum. I care about you, not about where you’re from. I thought…after we quarreled, I thought you’d lost interest in me.”

  “Never. I’m sorry about the things I said.”

  “And I’m sorry I used the fire spell on the door knob.”

  We clung together for a few minutes more, until he mastered himself. Pulling back, he wiped at eyes swollen with tears. “We shouldn’t stay here. It isn’t safe.”

  “You’re quite right.” I hesitated, not sure how to give him the news. “I’m sorry, Griffin, but Elliot is working with the yayhos.”

  “I know.”

  “You do?”

  “How do you think I found you?” he asked. “I’d knocked on your door earlier in the day, but when you didn’t answer, I decided to give you time to cool off. When you didn’t come to dinner and still didn’t answer, I picked the lock and found Elliot’s note on the desk. Since I’d spent half the day unsuccessfully trying to convince him to arrest Orme as an impostor, it seemed very odd he would invite you to his house to discuss the matter. I tried to tell myself there was a harmless explanation, but I think even then I knew.”

  “I’m sorry.” Elliot had been my rival—or I’d thought him my rival—but I hated the man for hurting Griffin.

  “I went to the house, but was unable to get a reply, which didn’t reassure me at all. Christine and I decided to keep watch. Elliot finally returned in the small hours of the night, with mud on his shoes and no reasonable explanation as to where you had gone.” Griffin took my hand, his fingers twining with mine. “It took some…persuading…to get him to admit he’d given you over to the yayhos. He tried to convince me he did it to save the town or some such rot.” Fury sparked in Griffin’s green eyes. “I was beside myself with fear for you. Elliot told me it was already too late. They would have removed your brain and replaced it with one of their own, or the brain of a loyal agent. He said when I saw you next, it wouldn’t be you at all. I think if Christine hadn’t been there, I would have killed him.”

  “Christine held you back? Why? Did she wish to do away with him herself?”

  He smiled wanly. “She wished to avoid either of us ending up in jail charged with murder, I think. We agreed one of us should try to rescue you, while the other warned the town. She let me come for you because…well.”

  “She knew you would do what needed to be done,” I suggested softly.

  His fingers tightened convulsively on mine. “God, Whyborne. If I’d had to kill you, even though it wouldn’t really have even been you, it would have destroyed me. I don’t see how I could possibly have gone on.”

  I opened my mouth to say I knew him to be strong, and he would have persevered. But a deep boom, similar to the crash of nearby thunder, drowned out my words. It echoed off the mountains, seeming to roll on and on, the trees and the hollows reflecting the roar back on itself over and over again.

  “What was that?” I asked.

  Griffin’s face had gone white in the light of the lantern. “An explosion.”

  “The mine?”

  “No—or at least, I don’t think it was. It sounded too far away.”

  “Then what?”

  “I don’t know.” He rose to his feet and hauled me up after him. “We have to get back to town. Now.”

  I nodded sharply. “Run as fast as you can. I’ll keep up.”

  ~ * ~

  When we finally burst out of the choking woods and saw Threshold below us, it was like viewing a landscape of hell. Lanterns bobbed through the dark streets as people tried to flee, and screams and gunfire rent the air.

  Yayhos swarmed out of the mine. Dear heavens, how many were there? And how had they gotten into the mine? Had their own tunnels brought them within breakthrough distance to the human diggings? I counted at least three dozen of them, some which stuck to the ground, and others which took to the air, circling above the panicking town on clumsy wings.

  More screams and gunfire came from higher on the hill. Abominations shambled out of the woods, reaching multiple arms to grab fleeing townspeople, or simply spreading terror by their hideous aspect. Some of the abominations seemed to have the wit left to operate firearms, and shot into the crowd, creating further havoc.

  I came to a halt, overwhelmed by the scene in front of us. What could we possibly do against such a force? Christine was down there, somewhere in the midst of the chaos. How could we find her, let alone defend the town?

  “No!” shouted a voice, even above the cries and howls. “You can’t!”

  Elliot.

  Griffin ran toward the sound of Elliot’s voice, a snarl on his lips, and I followed.

  Elliot and a force of Pinkertons stood in the street near the coal tipple. Elliot now sported a black eye, his lower lip split and swollen. Evidence of Griffin’s “persuasion?”

  The other detectives looked horrified, pale and trembling, clutching their guns in their hands…and not firing on anything, not lifting a hand to save the town, and, for a moment, I hated them all.

  Orme stood in front of them, face-to-face with Elliot. “You will do as you’re ordered, Mr. Manning,” he said in his calm, reptile voice. “The miners are abandoning the mine. Call it an illegal strike, if it salves your conscience, but your men will shoot anyone who tries to leave Threshold.”

  Fear and revulsion twisted Elliot’s face. “Curse you, that wasn’t the deal! They said they only wi
shed to be left alone. They said if we did what they asked, they wouldn’t attack the town! I won’t do this!”

  “You are relieved of duty. Mr. Fredericks—“

  Fredericks gripped his rifle. “Devil take you, I’m not shooting women and children trying to flee from monsters!”

  Orme’s face twisted into a snarl. “Do as you’re told, or die with them!”

  “He isn’t human!” I shouted as we ran up. “It isn’t really Mr. Orme at all!”

  The thing wearing Orme’s skin shot me a look of mingled surprise and venomous hatred. Then, so fast I could barely credit it, he vanished into the darkness.

  Elliot’s look of shock was almost comical. “Wh-Whyborne?”

  Griffin strode up to him and, without the slightest hesitation, swung his fist into Elliot’s face.

  Elliot went down, clutching at his eye and nose. Griffin stood over him, his overlong curls blowing in the wind, his eyes narrowed with contempt and fury, both hands clenched into fists. “You collaborated with those things! You tried to hand Whyborne over to them! Tell me why I shouldn’t just kill you this instant.”

  “Boss…is it true?” Fredericks approached hesitantly, his eyes wide and uncertain. “Did you really deal with those monsters?”

  Elliot slumped back into the dirt. “They said they would attack the town, if I didn’t do as they ordered,” he said hopelessly. “I saw what they were capable of, and I knew we’d never have a chance against them. I-I tried to save everyone I could.”

  He seemed a far cry from the exquisite man I’d met my first day here, or even the competent detective I’d unwillingly gotten to know. His hair was disarranged, blood trickled from one nostril, and dirt and muck covered his suit.

  I’d thought him perfect. As someone I couldn’t hope to match in Griffin’s fancy. Now I felt only pity for him.

  “Take up arms against them,” I said. “You can at least do that.”

  He nodded miserably. “I will. But we can’t possibly succeed.”

  “You’re wrong. Griffin has already killed one, with only his sword cane,” I said firmly. Looking up, I discovered the other men watching me. My face grew hot, but I soldiered on. “Th-that is, they aren’t immortal or indestructible. It won’t be easy, but we can’t simply lie down and die. We must save as many people as we can.”