“But I could send you a letter close to when the ambush was going to happen, to say good-bye and hope you’d figure it out, and you did.”
“I don’t like or trust these dreams,” Maude said. “They are making you sick, and I know they are getting worse, aren’t they?” Constance nodded.
“Since last year, yes,” she said. “Now there are always two people in the city made out of bone with me … not people, forces, ideas … I’m not sure what they are exactly but they look like people in the dream, a man and a woman. They love and hate one another. It’s what they are made of, partly, love and hate.”
Maude brushed the hair from her daughter’s eyes. She’d be fifteen in a few months and she still was a child in so many ways. She was terrified of the powers behind these dreams, and she was trying so hard to be brave, to be grown up. It made Maude’s heart ache, and for a moment she wondered if her father perhaps still saw her the same way, still his child.
“Please, trust me now,” Constance said. “I need to keep Grandpa safe. At least long enough for you two to stop shouting at each other. I’ll figure out some way to let you know if I dream about anything else happening.”
“All right,” Maude said. “Promise me you’ll get him and yourself out of here if there is even a hint of trouble, and please, please, be careful. Be mindful of everything; this is no exercise, this is as real as it gets. I’m going to find out all I can about who these ‘Sons’ are, and why they are after you.”
“They said I was the Grail of Lilith,” Constance said. “And the last of the Daughters.”
“It’s a place to start, at least,” Maude said. “I don’t care who they are or why they want you, no one’s going to hurt you. I promise.”
Constance smiled, but inside herself she felt the strange otherness return, gnawing at her mind. She loved and trusted her mother, but a horrible feeling of inescapable inevitability was settling over her, a sense that no matter what course of action she took, in the end, the result was going to be the same.
Maude saw the worry, the weariness in her daughter’s eyes and wished she knew the words to comfort her, to chase all the awful dreams away.
* * *
Beneath the earth, in the cold room of Stuhr-Burning Cabinet Makers and Undertakers, Alter Cline followed a young assistant undertaker, Glen, past rows of wooden tables laden with corpses. Glen’s lantern illuminated their way. Their footsteps echoed on the sawdust-covered floor of the dark, cold room. The smell of formaldehyde and decay was everywhere with just a peaty hint of rich dirt.
Cline had learned in battle and in journalism that one had to trust one’s instincts or else one ended up in a room like this. When he had gotten the tip from one of his newly cultivated contacts here in Charleston about strange bodies being discovered on the street near the opera house, he’d had an itch in the back of his mind that it was connected to Maude Stapleton and her Lilith cult.
Three cloth-shrouded bodies lay side by side on tables in the back of the room, as if even in the equality of death, these three were not welcome. Glen raised the lantern to give the reporter a better look.
“There they are, Mr. Cline,” Glen said, “jist like I promised yew. The police brought ’em in, said they weren’t to be fiddled with. I hear tell some big bugs all the way from Washington are coming to look at ’em. Pinkerton men, they say.”
“May I, Glen?” Alter asked, his breath swirling in the chill, damp air of the stone cellar. He nodded toward the sheets.
“Sure,” Glen said. “Yew paid for the full tour, so go ahead, but I hope you didn’t eat supper yet.”
Alter flipped the cover off the first corpse. It was a man. There was a strange blue residue around his nose and mouth, but otherwise he looked normal until you reached his wrists. He had large, crab-like claws that seemed to be made of a flesh-colored, callus-like tissue.
“Remarkable,” Alter said. “Some freakish aberration, perhaps?”
“The coppers seemed to think they were from a circus sideshow maybe,” Glen offered. Alter slid the cloth down on the other two—one with an odd-looking wound on his cheek; the other lay on his belly, massive bone spurs jutting up from his spine. Alter circled the tables from different angles.
“There is chicanery to most sideshow anomalies,” Cline said. “I see none here. This looks real.”
“That ain’t the queerest part,” Glen said. “They ain’t got no blood in them, least not like people blood.”
“What do you mean?” Alter asked. In way of a response, Glen moved the lantern to illuminate a long table set against the far wall. The lantern’s light briefly revealed all manner of dirty medical tools and a long catheter connected to a jar full of a viscous dark fluid, like oil.
“They pumped it out of all of ’em,” Glen said. “Smells … weird. It ain’t like any blood I ever saw come out of a corpse before.” Alter walked over to the work table. He knelt close to the jar.
“Glen, may I have a sample of this substance?”
“Sure,” the young man said. “As far as the usual requests I get from folks wantin’ into the cold room, that one’s pretty gentle.”
* * *
“Alexandria will not be pleased,” Itzel said.
“Alexandria is an alailopolo,” Amadia said. “Neither of us work for her. I say this whole prophecy business is a sham.”
They were in the salon of the grand suite at the Pavilion Hotel, their residence since arriving a few days ago in Charleston. Itzel sat nude in one of the armchairs. She preferred to wear very few clothes, only dressing when it was necessary to avoid detection or drawing undue attention. She had several tiny hummingbirds currently enthralled. The birds hovered near her head. Amadia was in a robe and pacing the lavishly adorned room.
“Alailopolo?” Itzel asked, arching an eyebrow. “I’m sorry, I know very little of the African tongues.”
“A fool,” Amadia said, “a fool with no sense.”
“Isn’t that a bit redundant?” Itzel said. “I suppose most curses are. Amadia, I thought we had all agreed. None of us like this course of action, but Alexandria seems to be the only one who has a plan to keep the Daughters going. The Sons being here and trying to kill the girl does seem to lend some credence to the prophecy’s validity, don’t you think?”
“I think there are very few of us in this world as there is and we don’t need to be killing our own.”
Amadia held up a copy of The Charleston Daily News. On the front page was a story about the attempted abduction of Martin Anderton’s granddaughter by unknown parties. “We’ve already attracted more notice here than we should have.”
“And we’d be gone by now, with the girl, if you had followed through,” Itzel said. “I do understand how you feel, my friend. The girl distinguished herself admirably in combat with the Sons, as did her mother, but the fact remains that unless we at least attempt this ritual, the Sons will pick us off one by one until there is no one to stop them. The Daughters must be able to endure into the future. This is bigger than the life of a single child.”
Amadia tossed down the newspaper and walked to the window overlooking Hasel Street. “That sounds like Alexandria talking out of your mouth, Itzel.”
“You may detest her,” Itzel replied, “but that does not mean she is wrong. Why do you two hate each other so much?”
Amadia turned from the window. “How much do you know about the Grail of Lilith?” she asked. Itzel furrowed her brow and the hummingbirds lighted on her outstretched index finger.
“I know what I was taught by the Nagul,” she said. “The goddess, Ix Chel—who is also known as Lilith—shed her moon-blood into the flask that came to be known as the Grail. It was the first container to hold the essence of her power and wisdom. In time, as the Daughters grew in number and spread across the world to battle the monstrous Sons of Tezcatlipoca, certain Daughters were given lesser flasks that were connected to the first Grail and the great endless river of the Mother’s blood, stored within it.”
“Guardianship of the Grail is a great responsibility and a privilege,” Amadia said. “Over nine hundred years ago, Alexandria Poole’s ancestors were given that privilege, the first whites to ever be so honored. Three centuries ago, my iya, my mother, took the Grail away from Alexandria’s family for abusing its power.”
“Abusing it? How?” Itzel asked, dismissing the charmed hummingbirds from her thrall. They flew across the room and lighted in a small birdcage. She leaned forward intently
“The Pooles were drinking from the Grail more than just the one time prescribed by the initiation ritual. Lilith’s blood was … influencing them, affecting their children … changing them in unnatural ways.”
Itzel winced a little. “More than once? I can’t imagine. It felt like starlight and acid was burning through me when I took the blood at seven.”
“Seven?” Amadia said. “So young.”
“It’s the way of the Nagul,” Itzel said. “In order to develop the nonphysical powers the blood grants us, we must begin the training a bit younger than most traditions do. The blood alters the brain as it grows and develops in your childhood.” Itzel noted the look on Amadia’s face. “You don’t consider me ‘unnatural,’ do you, Amadia?”
“I must admit, I find what you do a bit … unnerving,” Amadia said. Itzel smiled slightly at the admission. “But, no,” Amadia continued, “if anything it seems your training has given you well-balanced mental faculties.”
“We are taught to respect this gift from Ix Chel,” Itzel said. “To use it to better understand all living things and to harness it to better defend the world from wickedness. If one were to take the blood that young without proper instruction, it would be very dangerous, very bad.”
“The Pooles, including Alexandria, are unstable, often dangerously so,” Amadia said. “They used the Grail in their own attempt to gain control of the British Isles shortly after the fall of the Roman’s empire. They … it’s better not to discuss it. Needless to say, they proved they could not be trusted with the Grail, and it was recovered by my iya, Raashida. The Pooles hate Raashida, and since she trained me, they hate me as well.”
“If she took the Grail away from Alexandria’s family,” Itzel asked, “why did she give it to the pirate queen to trust?”
“A very good question,” Amadia said. “Whenever she’d tell me the story all she would say on the matter was that her faith was restored and she knew she had found a good guardian for the Grail.”
Itzel snorted. “Obviously not, or else we wouldn’t be in this mess now.”
“I trust my iya,” Amadia said. “I’m sure she had her reasons.”
“Well, that explains the sense I got between you and Alexandria,” Itzel said. “Now why do you and Ya hate one another so much?”
Amadia laughed. “It was wise of the Mother to make it a rule that we Daughters do not come together unless it is a dire crisis. I once had to pursue a bit of business in her country about six years ago. China was in the middle of a bloody civil war, and I was there to stop a monstrous creature that fed off of war and hatred.” Amadia’s eyes dulled a bit. “It ate its fill. Tens of millions dead. I ended it, but Ya resented my intrusion into ‘her’ country, and she disagreed with my methods. We nearly came to blows several times and there was a … personal matter that I do confess I was in the wrong about.”
Itzel was silent for a moment. “It is strange we can have so many things in common and yet be so divided.”
“Everyone thinks their path is the proper one,” Amadia said. “Especially the wicked.” Amadia sat down on the sofa next to her fellow Daughter. “I know we agreed to take on this mission, but I think it wise to advise Alexandria and the others that the Sons are here and that they have targeted the girl. We could send a coded telegram and keep an eye on the girl to make sure she is safe.”
“I suppose that seems reasonable given the change in circumstances. You’re stalling,” Itzel said.
“And you didn’t even have to read my mind,” Amadia said. “You … you can’t do that, can you?”
Itzel said nothing. The ghost of a smile returned to her child-like face.
* * *
The Leviathan was docked in a slip near Boyce’s Wharves, in the sprawling, vibrant and chaotic maze of Charleston’s port. The ship was an old opium clipper, well past her prime. The figurehead on the bow of the ship was a grotesque mermaid, partly digested by time. It had blue-green scaled skin and a jagged, uneven crown sunk, painfully, into her brow. Most of the mermaid’s features had been eroded away; she no longer had eyes or a nose, but her mouth was like a lamprey’s, wreathed in gnarled tentacles. The ship’s wooden, worm-eaten hull was stained dark against the black, lapping tongues of the sea. Her ship rig was furled, the spidery forest of masts and lines silhouetted in the meager moonlight like the skeletal remains of trees in a burned-out forest. The old salts all muttered about how queer the ship was. No crew seemed to occupy her in the accusing light of day, but shadows moved along her decks and nests once night fell. Some of the venerable sailors would spit and cross themselves, whispering the ship was cursed, crewed by devils and the undead. They were close to the truth, but it was far worse.
The smiling man, his given name Rory Danvers, entered the captain’s cabin and fell to one knee. His usual sardonic tone abandoned him. He was in the presence of a god, his god, ancient and merciless. “Father,” he said.
The interior of the cabin was sparse and poorly lit by a single oil lamp. There was a bunk, desk and chair. On a wooden table in the corner were several pieces of broken ancient clay tablets marked with odd chicken-scratch-like print. An ankh figured prominently on the tablets’ faces. There was also an ancient vase painted with figures. Rory thought it might be Grecian. It depicted a bearded man hurling lightning at a grinning winged being with the upper body of a man and a lower body made up of snakes.
Sitting in the chair was the master of the ship and Rory’s master as well. The man in the chair was tall and lanky, a bit like a scarecrow. His hair was black and straight, worn in a short cut with a side part. He was clean shaven.
Most of his face fell in the shadows cast by the lamp, but Rory knew Father’s false face well and had seen it many times. His eyes were bright green, almost luminous, and seemed to burn their way out of the shadow. Looking into those eyes was akin to looking into the eyes of a lizard, or snake; there was nothing of human empathy in them. The mouth was too wide, the nostrils flared and shaped oddly, the shape of the eyes just slightly wrong. Every detail was minutely asymmetrical, more than normal human variation might allow, and all the proportions were subtly off as well.
The whole of the man’s face looked as though it had been crafted by an artist that had never seen a human being before. If you saw the man you wouldn’t know immediately that something was wrong about him, but the parts of your brain that worked on instinct would know you were in the presence of something alien and would silently scream in the primordial chemical language of fear.
Father wore a dark suit with a vest, a few years out of fashion. He put down on the desk the book he had been reading, The Coming Race, by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, with a hand that had slightly-too-long fingers.
“Yes, Rory?” Father said.
“Forgive me for interrupting,” Rory said, still kneeling. He kept his head down, looking at the floor. He noticed a rat’s corpse curled up near the bulkhead. The creature was frozen in death, a grimace of pain on its tiny face. For a moment he wondered what had killed it, then his mind filled in the blanks for him when he glanced up and saw Father’s wide, inhuman shadow on the wall, writhing and undulating. The shadow didn’t match the veneer of the man sitting calmly in the chair.
“An interesting premise,” Father said, gently tapping the book. “I foresee we can help some very disturbed minds get inspiration from it, which should be delightful to watch unfold. I take it your mission was not successful?”
“No, Father,” Rory said, a tiny trickle of terr
or seeping into his broken mind. “I’m the only one to escape alive. Forgive me, it was those damn Daughters of the Whore-Mother. They are here in Charleston. They want the girl too.”
“Of course they do,” Father said. “They think they need her to survive.” Father laughed and Rory nearly wet himself from the sound, even though he had heard it many times before. Father’s laugh was akin to hearing a live skinned cat tossed into scalding water.
“You and the others did very well, Rory,” Father said. “I didn’t expect you to stop them, just convince them. I’m sure you were all very sincere in your efforts.”
When the Sons of Typhon had found Rory, he was eleven years old and slitting the throats of alley bums in Leeds. He was semi-feral, constantly hungry, with the conscience and moral faculties of a sewer rat. All he had known since then was the brutal love and discipline of the Sons. When he had undergone his initiation and drunk Father’s blood, his rebirth had involved only mental changes. His mind was now truly inhuman and cosmically obscene in its contemplation. All his genius departed him in the presence of Father, however, and he became dull with fear, like an animal. He was smart enough to know he was before a thing that saw all of humanity as bacteria. Father had demonstrated many times his capacity for casual, almost thoughtless murder since his return from his imprisonment. Rory feared very few things upon the Earth, but Father was not of the Earth.
“The beauty of it is,” Father explained, “even for all their much-lauded moral superiority, in the end they are exactly like any other stupid animal; they will do anything to try to survive. Life, Rory, is the ultimate narcotic. Those who have had a taste of it drift vapidly through this illusory world, slapped together by an imperfect architect with delusions of divinity. His ham-handed design is a fusion of slaughterhouse and asylum, but the true jest is that the poor addled addicts will do anything for more. They beg for more time in this abattoir. The Daughters will have to cut the child open and drain her dry to complete the ritual. Then there’s our little surprise. So your failure is our victory, my most loyal of sons. Rise. Tell me what happened. Use that beautifully altered ten-dimensional brain of yours to give me every salient detail.”
The Queen of Swords Page 14