Winter Tide Page 15

  I resisted a look at Leroy, and sighed. “And do you like your taste of forbidden lore?”

  Sally bit her lip. “Don’t make fun. If you’re going to kill me, I’d appreciate it if you’d answer my questions first.”

  One of the guards laughed, and she flinched. “A Miskatonic student to the core,” he said.

  “I beg your pardon.” She pulled away from Leroy. He tried to reclaim her hand and she shook him off. “I am a Hall student.”

  I smiled in spite of myself, aware that it would not be reassuring. “Audrey is here with me. I’m here to speak to my family, whom I haven’t seen since 1928. These are my family, and what they’re going to do depends on whether you can convince me—and them—that you won’t bring down the National Guard on us.” Spector might well be able to curtail such a thing, but it wasn’t something I cared to gamble on, and certainly nothing I could persuade the elders to take into account.

  Leroy broke in—from the look he gave Sally I suspected he wanted to regain control of the conversation almost as much as he wanted to survive it. “Why shouldn’t we? Shouldn’t they know about you?”

  Before I could find a response, Chulzh’th stepped between us and grabbed him by his starched collar. “We keep to ourselves. You are the intruders here—do you really think to threaten us?”

  The sharp stink of ammonia told an end to any chance of rational negotiation. Leroy kicked and swung at her with unscientific punches. I pulled Sally to the side. “Say something sensible—anything!”

  “We won’t tell. I promise we won’t tell!” She tried to pull away toward Leroy and Chulzh’th, but I held fast to her arm.

  “That’s no guarantee—you can say anything.”

  “What do you want?” Her breath came quickly, stinking of fear. “We tried a ritual last year. Some sort of crazy tantra thing Jesse found. One of the teachers caught us, caught me with Jesse and Leroy all together. Leroy’s dad paid to keep it quiet and there, a nice bit of blackmail, are you happy?”

  Leroy froze in the midst of his struggle with Chulzh’th. “She’s making that up—I never!”

  “Mammalian rutting,” said Archpriest Ngalthr. “Is what she describes truly forbidden? It has been a little while since Puritan mores held sway on land.”

  “Sodomy, and interfering with the virtue of a young lady of quality? Yes, those are still scandals.” Chulzh’th grinned and lifted Leroy a little higher. “Are you sure you don’t want this one as a mate, Aphra? He sounds lively.”

  “Quite. Thank you.” I gritted my teeth against the sudden memory of a soldier in my parents’ foyer, lifting me just so, mugging for his fellows, goading my father to his death. Hey Jack, check out my ugly girl.

  Leroy rolled his eyes wildly and flailed in Chulzh’th’s grip. She caught her balance easily and tried to grasp his swinging arms—but one unlucky blow landed in the vulnerable soft tissue of her eye. She roared, slashing out blindly, and Leroy fell to the sand, shirt and chest shredded by four parallel furrows.

  Chulzh’th gasped and clutched her hand. I let go of Sally, who threw herself to the ground beside him, Audrey close behind.

  “You killed him,” wailed Sally. Chulzh’th backed further, holding herself tightly.

  “She didn’t,” observed the archpriest. “His blood is still flowing.” But he made no move to intervene.

  I wished for Spector or Dawson, and their knowledge of mundane first aid. I had a vague idea of bandages, and that salt water might clean a wound. I had neither skills nor supplies. Instead I knelt at Leroy’s shoulder and dipped my finger in red arterial blood. Sally shrieked and tried to push me away, but Audrey grabbed Sally’s hands and shook her head violently. I drew a quick and dangerously messy glyph in the sand, muttered the chant as swiftly as I could pronounce it, and hoped the salt left in Leroy’s wounds from Chulzh’th’s talons would be sufficient.

  I’d never done this variant on the Inner Sea before—trying to ride someone else’s blood without using my own as a foundation—and could tell immediately that I’d done it wrong. Blood is one of the three foundations of magic, but it is not a foundation of control.

  The spell tore me from awareness of my own body and plunged me into Leroy’s. His blood was of the air, and fragile. But he was young and strong and knew his final form only vaguely; everything in him fought desperately for survival—not a torrent but a flood overflowing its banks. I floundered, seeking the flood’s source, but could not direct my own consciousness, let alone the vital forces surrounding me: the pulse, too fast to ease the flow; the natural guardians that staunch wounds, too slow at their work.

  I began, dimly, to feel my own body again. Something touched my shoulder, and a familiar pulse echoed Leroy’s. I grasped at the familiarity, found Audrey’s muddy river bank, dragged her into the spell as a drowning man will seize a hand without regard for sense or safety. As our connection flared I felt Caleb, drawn forward to touch my other shoulder in spite of deep reluctance, and Charlie, out of breath from the climb and sitting abruptly in the soft sand of the dune, reaching out and sharing strength.

  And none of that was enough. I sensed them all, knew they could sense me, knew them swept into the same flood that bore me along. But the spell had no less power, no more control, than before. If we had practiced longer, knew one another better, I might have been able to push my students to pronounce our intentions in clearer Enochian or trace better-formed symbols. But my vague sense of Caleb’s unease was the closest thing to thought that passed among us.

  I clung to their bodies. I heard Neko’s urgent questions through Charlie’s ears, saw out of the corner of his eye Trumbull survey the scene and start down the dune. In strange offset harmony—Caleb’s hearing a fraction sharper and faster than Audrey’s—Ngalthr said to Chulzh’th: “Your wound. Your choice.”

  Long silence, and flood waters rising—and then Caleb’s eyes following Chulzh’th as she knelt to mark a diagram around our bodies. On her claws, Leroy’s blood had already begun to dry and darken. She moved slowly, trying to draw lines that would hold in the shallow sand. Sally cringed and glared as the acolyte came close. Further symbols crowded around us.

  As Chulzh’th built word and symbol atop my rough foundation, our path through the floodwaters began to take on form and meaning. Now I could find the wound, sense the places where it sought to knit together and the purpose in Leroy’s blood as it strove to find a healing hold. I worked to strengthen those capacities, channeling the power that had almost drowned me. There were ways to draw on the support of my confluence, but none that I’d studied. Still their presence anchored me against the temptations of fear, as I worked with tools I scarce understood to save a man who’d likely turn on me if I succeeded.

  At last I felt the floodwaters recede. They settled slowly, still far too high. I continued to push until Audrey shook my shoulder. “Aphra, it’s stopped healing. That’s all we’re going to get.”

  I awoke to my own body, shaking my head with the shock of the transition. I gathered my courage, then took in what lay before me. Leroy breathed, a victory in itself. His wounds had grown shallow, blood begun to thicken and clot. Some seeped around the edges, though, and his breathing was labored. A hand to his forehead found it covered in clammy sweat: both wounds and their repair had taxed him, and further illness might threaten. But he was alive. Now we would need to figure out what to do with that.

  Charlie came down the dune, faster than he should with the cane, close-spotted by Neko. She hurried to my side: “Onee-san, are you okay?”

  Neko rarely used the Japanese honorifics that came so easily to Mama Rei; she must be shaken as well. I realized I was trembling. I put my arm around her. “I will be, I think.”

  “What happened?” asked Charlie. Trumbull knelt to examine the healing sigils, and I resisted the urge to shout at her.

  “Leroy tried to fight the acolyte,” I said instead. “She lost her temper.”

  Chulzh’th ducked her head. “I was not angry.
I was startled.” In R’lyehn: “For one on the clerical path to so easily be caught unawares, and to shed blood in surprise, is inexcusable. I might have chosen to harm him if he would not promise silence, but I apologize for doing so without intention.”

  “You might have? He’s barely spawn, surely there were other ways.” Now I was losing my temper—fully aware of it, but unable to resist the need to release the pent-up fear and frustration and the sight of a boy I disliked lying unconscious in the sand. Every blade-sharp R’lyehn phrase I’d ever heard from my mother, in her rare moments of anger, came pouring out. “Have the pressure changes addled your mind? Are you a mayfly to make thoughtless choices in a second’s time? Is this what you wish written of you in the Archives?”

  “Aphra Yukhl,” said Grandfather. “Speak respectfully to your elders.”

  “We do what we must to protect our people,” said Archpriest Ngalthr. “Sometimes it must be done quickly. Long life does not mean having forever to choose.”

  “Is that what happened with Upton?” I demanded. “You had no time to decide what to do with him—no time to reconsider this past quarter-century?”

  “Wait, who?” asked Chulzh’th, startled into English.

  “He avenged Asenath Waite,” I said. “And you left him in a madhouse for it.”

  “I did that,” said my grandfather. “No one would have sent a new-made acolyte against Ephraim. And if you had heard his killer ranting against us, or seen the destruction wrought by mere fear of body theft, you would not question our decision. You must learn patience, child.”

  “Which brings us to the current question.” Ngalthr’s bass cut through our escalation. “We still must decide what to do with these children. And they are children, as Aphra Yukhl says. Can they be trusted, having given us their own secrets as surety?”

  “And…” Chulzh’th trailed off, but her glance at Leroy’s chest made their concern clear. His body might tell what his tongue would not.

  “The Miskatonic Monster!” said Audrey. She shrunk back as a dozen heads turned her way.

  One of the elders I didn’t recognize shook her head. “Regardless of rumor, if there were still wolves in this part of the state we’d have smelled them.”

  “Hasn’t been a sighting in twenty years anyway,” said Sally.

  “We’re not trying to catch it,” said Audrey. “Look, we carry him up closer to the construction site, everyone who can vanish vanishes, and I get hysterical about how we were exploring the marshes outside town and this huge wolf thing jumped us, and it was the Miskatonic Monster, and just keep being hysterical so they bring him to the hospital without asking too many questions. Jeez, Sally, if you guys knew how to do a cover-up story right, maybe you wouldn’t have gotten caught trying to summon demons under your skirt with the boys!”

  “The girl’s plan is sound.” Trumbull spoke at last. “If you do wish to continue your connections with the land for another few decades, I suggest not standing around in endless argument over a bleeding body. This area is open, and sound and sight carry information a long way. The men in town are bored and cold, and will investigate the least anomaly soon enough.”

  A pause while everyone considered this, and then Archpriest Ngalthr ducked his head. “As you say, Great One. Yringl’phtagn?”

  My grandfather nodded. “Jhathl and Khr’jhelkh’ng, bring the body closer to the marshlands, and make enough tracks to support their story. Don’t let anyone see you. Child”—this to Sally—“come here.”

  She crouched beside Leroy a moment longer, then hesitantly stood and approached. She cast her gaze up and down, taking in my grandfather’s form.

  “I apologize, but we must have surety for your word. Hold out your arm.”

  This time she looked to me, and when I nodded she did as he bid. Her hand did not tremble. Audrey slipped up and touched her shoulder. Slowly, so as not to startle her, my grandfather took Sally’s hand and nicked her palm. She shivered but did not pull away. A drop of blood welled to the surface. “Aphra Yukhl.” At his direction, I rolled up my sleeve. He sketched a sigil on my forearm with the blood-dipped claw. I winced at the blossom of pain and the dim echo of Sally’s corporeal fear in the sigil, clear in my mind for a moment before it faded. “There. With that, you will practice tracking, and you will know if she betrays us—and do what’s needful.”

  The look in his dark eyes dared me to argue further, and I ducked my head. “Yes, Grandfather.”

  “Good.” He gathered me close again, and I wished that I could forget all the day’s fearful demands in the circle of his touch and scent. He gestured Caleb over, embraced him, held him at length. “Study with your sister, and do not be frightened away by the ignorance that was forced on you.”

  “Yes, Grandfather.”

  “And both of you, think on the duties we’ve discussed. We’ll talk further when you return—do not wait so long this time.”

  In moments, we were alone—save for the two elders that my grandfather had assigned to move Leroy.

  “All right.” I squared my shoulders, tried to focus on practicalities. “Who will have been exploring the marshlands with you?”

  “I’ll go,” said Audrey. “I’m usually with them when they do stupid things, and I can do believable hysteria at the drop of a hat. Anyone else’ll get more questions. You’ve got a car, right?” Sally nodded shakily. With the promise that Audrey would report back that evening, they left, trailing Jhathl and Khr’jhelkh’ng and their burden.

  “Have you other errands here?” asked Trumbull.

  I looked back at the dunes. “No.” I considered asking if she had learned what she wished, realized that I wouldn’t be able to ask politely.

  “Your family…” Charlie trailed off.

  “We’ll talk about them later. For now, let’s go back to the university.”

  When we returned, we found the campus invaded.

  CHAPTER 14

  At first it seemed natural that, on the Saturday before classes began, we should find a long line of cars wending slowly through Miskatonic’s wrought iron gate. However, as the line moved forward I saw a barrier across the road, and five tall men in well-tailored suits who spoke to each driver before permitting passage.

  “They’ve got guns,” said Neko quietly. She was right. The bulges under their jackets were unmistakable—nor, I thought as I saw one man flash his badge at a recalcitrant chauffeur, were they intended to be mistaken.

  Caleb grimaced. “We should turn back. Something’s happened.”

  “Don’t be absurd,” said Trumbull. She gestured at the cars. “Can you think of anything more suspicious? Look at how they all conform.”

  So we remained. “Puritans,” I murmured to Caleb, and he nodded. They were all of the type that we’d grown up calling by that name, and that I always had trouble distinguishing: tall and uniformly pale, with small eyes and aquiline features and chins that looked half cut off.

  “Puritan soldiers,” he said. And indeed, they wore the close-shaven haircuts of the camp guards. I tried not to look frightened, and I tried not to look like someone masking fear. But then, how would an ordinary person react? I watched the drivers and passengers in the other cars, tried to hear them above the rumble of idling engines. I caught snatches of curiosity, irritation, respect—a couple of boys, presumably returning students on the G.I. Bill, snapped salutes and passed easily. In others, though, I caught a hint of fear. Perhaps I could let some of what I felt show without marking myself as their rightful prey.

  Neko pulled up the hood of her coat, and buried her face in her scarf.

  “Hello, ma’am,” one of the men said when Trumbull rolled down her window. He sounded bored, though he peered curiously at the rest of us. The returning students did not, as a general rule, have nearly so many females in their cars. “What’s your business on campus?”

  “I’m a professor of mathematics. I’m returning home to do a great deal of course preparation.”

  One of the other
s frowned. “Miskatonic has girl professors?”

  Trumbull’s tone chilled. “It has one.”

  “And these folks,” the second man continued. “What are they, research assistants?” He motioned for us to roll down the back window. “She’s got a Jap back here. I don’t know what these other guys are, except the ugliest couple I’ve ever seen.”

  I held myself very still, and hoped Caleb could do likewise.

  “Now see here—” began Charlie from the front, but Trumbull held up a hand to silence him.

  “The aesthetics of my guests can hardly be your concern.” She pulled her scarf away from her eyes. “Why don’t you let us pass? There are many waiting behind us, and regardless of our looks, we’re no threat to you.”

  The man who’d insulted us nodded and stepped back. But the first man, the one closest to Trumbull, put his hand to his heart. He frowned and squinted down at the spot he touched. Then his eyes flew wide and his hand leapt to the lump beneath his suit jacket. Glancing at the line of cars behind us, he did not quite draw. “Ma’am, I need you to pull your car to the side so these other people can pass. And then I need you and your passengers to step out of the car. Keep your hands where I can see them—and your eyes where I can’t.”

  “That’s really not necessary,” said Trumbull.

  He pulled the gun an inch further out of its holster. “Ma’am, I told you, do not attempt to look anyone in the eye. Now please pull over.”

  “Do what he says,” said Neko quietly. “Please, Professor, do what he says.” She kept repeating the demand, holding herself tightly—“do what he says, do what he says”—as Trumbull steered the car through the gate and to the side of the road. Several times she started to turn her head, then forced her gaze forward again. Her hands clenched white around the steering wheel.

  “What do we do?” Caleb whispered. He sounded young and frightened.

  “For now, what they tell us.” I tried to keep the fright from my own voice—not to fool the soldiers, or whatever they were, but to reassure him and Neko.