by Ken Altabef
She heard an agonized scream coming from just next door. She had no idea if it had passed between the lips of her brother Crow.
“I’m scared!” Annis said.
Her voice was a disembodied wail, coming from the secret hiding space in the wall below Dresdemona’s closet.
“Be quiet,” she hissed. “And stay just where you are. When I’m sure it’s safe I’ll come back for you. Don’t say another word.”
“But there are ghosts here. So many ghosts.”
“Not another word!”
It would not be long now. The door would burst open and Bristlebane’s goons would be revealed, standing in the doorway. Would they have orders to kill her on sight or capture her? Fifty-fifty.
She hated herself for being frightened. She hated herself for feeling desperate and helpless, but there was no chance she could fight them, nor even hope to defend herself. She could only stand and await her fate. That she would do, but she hated it.
The door burst open.
Chapter 23
Dresdemona was dragged, kicking and screaming, into the master bedroom. Her wrists had been bound in front of her with a sturdy coil of twine. The bonds were a gesture of control, of subjugation, meant to impress her more than contain her. She put up a show of struggling, just to make it fun. She knew she would wind up at the feet of Bristlebane just the same. She wouldn’t have it any other way.
Her captors shoved her forward and she unbalanced and went to her knees. The master bedroom. Bristlebane had lost no time in taking possession of Og-Sethoth’s house. The master bedroom. Interesting.
Bristlebane sat on one of her father’s elegant winged-back chairs, a makeshift throne of sorts. Whereas Crow had been trim and handsome, the leader of the Wild Hunt was a beast. A hard life had left his face a ruin of battle scars. At some point half his nose had been torn away. Too much drink had made his belly round and flabby. He could have hidden these flaws with a simple glamour but chose not to do so. He wore his battle scars as a badge of honor. He was currently shirtless, his green-skinned chest and broad shoulders covered with sharp slender spines resembling the hide of a particularly dangerous hedgehog. It was for this prickly feature that he had earned the name Bristlebane.
“Who’s that?” he asked, squinting down at Dresdemona. “The sister? Which one is this, the crazy one or the pretender?”
Dresdemona glared up at him. “You know.”
Bristlebane laughed. “She pretends much.” He stood up and Dresdemona noticed his left leg faltered a little. He might have been wounded in the fighting.
“You may leave,” he told his men. “I think I can handle this one on my own. See to the storehouse. Make sure the brackenwine flows freely tonight. But none for the sentries. Three at each quarter, all night long.”
The two guardsmen retreated, closing the door behind them. Dresdemona forced herself not to smile. Alone in the bedroom? Things were going even better than she had hoped. She remained on her knees.
Bristlebane wiped his brow with a slow, weary movement. He didn’t realize he had blood on his hand and transferred a violet smudge across his bristly forelocks. “I hope you don’t mind. I redecorated the place.”
He pointed a blood-stained finger at the wall to her right. Dresdemona turned and saw the body of her brother Crow nailed to the wall between two of her father’s most precious tapestries. He was mounted upside down, his belly slit and some entrails exposed. A cataract of purple blood had run down his chest, pooled under his chin and run up his face like a pair of tear-tracks in reverse. One of his arms was missing at the shoulder.
If Bristlebane expected to see her shudder in fear or grief at the sight of Crow, she did not indulge him. The time for play-acting was over. They were alone.
She stared instead straight into his eyes. What was it they said? The eyes are the window to the soul. She needed to establish some type of connection and quickly.
Bristlebane seemed impressed by her fortitude at the sight of her hideously maimed brother’s corpse, but her lingering gaze elicited another more visceral response as well. He’d harbored sexual fantasies about her for quite a while; Dresdemona could feel that quite clearly. Probably Bristlebane had wanted to defile Og-Sethoth’s adopted daughter as a strike against the father. She pressed the connection, summoning the gladdrun from deep inside her core. That particular scent of saffron, damp rust and cardamom filled his nostrils. Lust was one of the easiest targets of the olfactory glamour, as long as there was a core attraction beneath.
She tossed her head. “You like my dark tresses, don’t you? My pretty copper skin? My athletic body?”
Bristlebane took two steps forward, stumbling with the faltering steps of a drunkard. He was almost hers already. She stood to meet him, stretching forth her bound wrists.
“Untie me.”
He leered back at her, drawing a slender dagger from his belt. She pressed her bonds rhythmically against the blade, purring softly through parted lips. Her eyes never left his.
She saw she had no hope of destroying Bristlebane as she had demolished her father. He would never immolate himself over a woman. He didn’t care that much. But he wanted her and she had already stoked his passions well enough to allow a few suggestions. Her hands freed, she enveloped one of his thorny hands, the one holding the knife. The contact excited him and she kept pouring forth the gladdrun through the touch. She pried the blade loose and held it before her. Now she encountered an appreciable burst of resistance. He would never let her kill him, and no point to it anyway. There would just be another brute after him and another and another. No, violence would not hold sway this night. She must feed the beast.
“Go ahead. Get on the bed,” she whispered.
When it was over, Bristlebane lay in an exhausted slumber. A bloated, stinking lump lying on his stomach like a gorged and swollen spider, snoring softly. The man was not completely inexhaustible. The events of the day had worn him down and their vigorous sex play had finished the job. Dresdemona had no intentions of remaining in his filthy bed for another go-round.
She rolled off the mattress and found her clothes. Before she left the room she slapped him across the face, rousing him from his stupor.
“No one may know of this, or you will never taste me again. Understood?”
He grunted softly and nodded his head, less interested in her threats than the resumption of blissful slumber.
She pinched his ear and gave it a twist.
His eyes popped open.
“Do you understand?”
The fact that he did not strike her down proved she had gained some leverage at least.
“No one shall know,” he said.
“My sister is not to be troubled. We are both under your protection.”
“Agreed.”
Dresdemona padded away down the hallway. It had been a long day for everyone and the occupants of the Green Briar, the remainders of Bristlebane’s occupying force, were mostly fast asleep. She must see to her sister. The pledge of protection she had bartered her body for would extend to her sister as well. The danger for Annis had passed.
She opened the door to her bedroom. No candle had been lit and she worried for her sister, cooped up in the darkness at the bottom of the closet for half the night, wondering what had happened.
“Annis?” she whispered. Dresdemona worked her away across the darkened room. As she rounded the foot of the bed, a dark silhouette flew toward her like a bat out of a cave. The wild figure collided with her shoulder, an elbow jabbing into her throat and Dresdemona was knocked backward to the floor.
“Murderer!” said a tormented voice barely recognizable as that of her sister.
“Get off!” Dresdemona hissed, shoving at the flurry of arms and elbows that assaulted her. She threw Annis to the side, a shrieking hell-cat clawing through the air as she went.
“Quiet! You’ll bring them all down around our necks.”
Annis who was now rendered as a black figure huddled again
st the wall and floor, began to sob. She spoke in a soft, pathetic voice, “You killed them. My father, my brothers…all of them!”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Why do you say such nonsense?”
“Because they told me. Their ghosts are here, in this room.”
“If their ghosts are anywhere it is in the witch-wood where we laid them in the ground.”
“You seduced him! Our father! You made him tear himself to pieces. I know!”
Clearly, she knew a lot more than she should. Dresdemona could not fathom how Annis had come by this information. It was a problem. She could perhaps be dismissed as a madwoman but if these rumours should ever reach Bristlebane’s ears… or Threadneedle’s…
No more time for conjecture as Annis threw herself forward, rolled along the ground as if having a seizure. She came up in front of Dresdemona, her jaws snapping like a mad dog. Dresdemona tried to push her away again. And then a sharp pain tore through her right breast. She felt her wind rush out as her lung collapsed. She tasted blood. She’d been stabbed.
The knife withdrew. Dresdemona searched the darkness for the next strike, but Annis flitted wildly across the room. She heard only some more desperate sobbing. This had gone too far.
“You love me,” Dresdemona said. She reached inside for the gladdrun. Lust would not avail her anything here but she could summon the scent of familial love just as well. Cardamom laced with asafetida, the particular smell of the herb ferula.
“You love me,” she repeated.
“I hate you!” Annis screamed. “Murderesssss!”
The knife clattered to the floor. Dresdemona struggled to breathe; her chest felt tight and wet inside.
“Annis, I need help,” she said.
“Help. Help. Mustn’t kill the whelp! Father! Oh, dear father.” Annis ran for the far wall, struggled a moment with the window sash and then was gone. Out the window, ten feet from the ground. She wasn’t dead. Laughter in the night and then a tortured scream.
I’ll deal with her later, Dresdemona thought, struggling to her feet. She was too weak to take more than a step or two and then crumpled to the bedroom floor.
“Just rest,” Threadneedle said.
Dresdemona looked around the room. It was a spare cubicle with minimal furnishings. After a minute she recognized it, a small hut Threadneedle had hidden in the Tremblay wood.
She tried to sit up but he gently guided her back down. The bed was a roughly rectangular box made of bound willow branches with a sheet of canvas stretched across them and a sack of straw on top. She pressed a hand to the wound at her breast.
“I’ve stopped the bleeding,” he said. “I think you’ll be alright in a day or two. I’ve a good hand at healing.”
She took as deep a breath as she could muster. At about the halfway point she felt a sharp pain in her chest and relented.
“I suppose it’s a bit thuggish to say I told you so,” he continued. “But now at least you’ll agree that I was right. There are still several places we can escape to.”
She shook her head. “I’m going back. We’re going back.”
“You’re not thinking clearly. Bristlebane nearly killed you…”
“It was Annis. She’s gone completely mad, ranting all sorts of nonsense. We’ve nothing to fear from Bristlebane.”
“We’ll talk about this later. You should rest now.”
She shook her head. “I need you to do something for me.”
“Anything.”
“When I’m better, I want you to challenge Bristlebane for leadership.”
Threadneedle sighed. “Are you certain Annis is the mad one?”
Dresdemona felt dizzy. She took a few more half breaths. She had not the strength to summon the gladdrun even if she could use it against Threadneedle. But that was impossible. No scent spell could manipulate his emotions now—he was already in love with her as deeply as possible. She could only hope to convince him.
“Listen to me. I will make sure you win.”
“And how can you do that?”
“Don’t ask! Trust me. You will rule the Winter Court with me by your side.”
Threadneedle’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t want to rule the Court!”
“You must. We will shape it. We will make it something better. Together. I assure you, you will win. If anyone challenges you, they will fall.”
“Presuming you have some way to cheat, I’m still not interested. I don’t want to win a challenge that way.”
“All’s fair. I can’t tell you more. Believe in me.”
Chapter 24
“Take a deep breath, all the way in, and then let it out.”
James placed his fingertips along Gryfflet’s temples. Her skin felt much the way it appeared—like tanned leather, thick and firm. She was roughly his mother’s age—still not yet in middle age for a faery despite over a century of life—and yet she was wrinkled as an old crone. Her eyes closed, her pale lips slightly parted, she seemed barely breathing at all. She’d grown so emaciated and thin, she closely resembled a corpse. James was desperate to help her.
“Are you still with me?” he asked.
Gryfflet had not spoken in over a week, but her eyes fluttered open, and she turned toward him and winked. Good enough.
She took up so little space on the cot, he had plenty of room to sit beside her. The faeries had given Gryfflet an apartment in one of the new buildings on Hawthorne Street, away from the hustle and bustle of the park. Theodora had brought all of Gryfflet’s things up from below. Poor Gryfflet couldn’t stand to enter the caves again. Even the subtle confines of this apartment troubled her. Moonshadow had commissioned Eccobius to design a rooftop aerie for her, a place that was open to the night sky. But there just hadn’t been enough time to organize construction. Theodora had decorated the apartment as best she could with brightly colored furniture and cheerful watercolor paintings. She’d hung crepe paper lanterns and flowers in planters on the walls. Most of the plants had already died.
“Fine,” said James. “Let’s begin. I want you to try and clear your mind. Just relax and think of nothing. Nothing at all. Can you do that?”
He’d not yet finished the sentence when he found she’d already done just that. He found it quite easy to make a connection with Gryfflet’s mind. It was as if most of it had already been torn away.
What was left of Gryfflet’s mind was still in turmoil, still locked in the windowless crypt somewhere below ground. James felt her torment. He saw her standing still as a statue in center of a large, dim room. The place smelled of soil and burnt coal with a hint of mold and brewer’s yeast. It was a basement somewhere in London, perhaps beneath a brewery. Gryfflet turned slowly around, her eyes glinting in the falling darkness. The room seemed to be shrinking, the walls closing in.
“It’s alright,” he said. “I’m here with you. You’re not alone.”
“Alone,” she whispered.
“You’re not alone. And you’re not trapped anymore. You’re free of this place. Let me show you.”
“Show… you…”
“No. Wait!’
The room darkened as if suddenly enveloped by creeping storm clouds. Miserable, cold, damp. Muffled sounds came from somewhere above, distorted by stone walls into a maddening blur of sound.
“We’ll get free,” James said.
All around him thick roots were growing in the dark, bursting up from between the stones of the cobbled floor, squeezing through moist cracks in the walls.
James reached for Gryfflet’s hand but she was gone. He was alone inside her mind. This had never happened before. His first instinct was to break contact but he didn’t want to leave her like this. His second thought was that without Gryfflet to guide him, he might not be able to break contact. He might be trapped here forever.
No. No, she must still be here. “Gryfflet! Gryfflet where are you?”
He heard a distant sound—a little girl’s laugh.
The creeping vines had become a practical
jungle. James crept forward, struggling his way through them. He could hardly see anything, could hear little but the weird muffled conversations drifting down from the tavern above.
“Gryfflet!”
He thought he caught a glint of movement up ahead, almost saw a face peeking out from behind the curled roots. A young girl’s face, soft and plump with short blonde curls. Gryfflet as she had been before!
“Don’t hide. I—I want to take you out of here.”
He rushed through the weeds, snapping shoots and dry branches in his wake. His shoe hit something rock solid, stubbing his toes. He stumbled and fell. It was a gravestone. There were many gravestones around. Deepgrave, he thought. Is this Deepgrave?
He heard a young girl’s scream.
“Stop moving! Gryfflet! Let me come to you.”
Tombstones everywhere. Lost hopes and broken dreams struck him in the face and jabbed at his stomach, scratching at his soul like claws. He felt nauseous, sick, but he would not give himself over to despair. Never. “I’m going to get you out!”
He struggled through the clinging vines, cloaked by darkness and illusion. He crawled over stone monuments but it became harder and harder to make any progress at all. The roots twined tightly around his ankles and calves. Rising sharply, they thrust crumbling gravestones up from beneath the ground. He was lost, lost and unable to get out. Trapped. No moon, no sky. “Gryfflet! Are you there?”
Something loomed overhead, something huge, moving with a flutter of leathery wings. He tore one leg away and took one step too far. The ground shifted beneath his feet. It crumbled like dry ash, swirling around him, sucking him down. James plunged into the earth, into total darkness. “No!” he screamed.
He found himself in another dark chamber under the ground, a small cavern with walls of black soil. In the center was a stone slab, a pale figure laying atop it. It was Gryfflet, not the young girl, but the old crone.
“Damn!”
He touched her face. The skin was cold. Tears rolled off his cheeks. This wasn’t right. She didn’t deserve this. He lay his head on her withered breast. Her chest was little more than a cage of ribs covered by a thin shroud of flesh. He listened, hearing only a whisper of a heartbeat, faint but sure, nothing more.
