A horrible hissing sound, as if Santiago was both trying to exhale and grit his teeth at the same time, reached me only moments before he stepped into the room.
His face was at war with itself, eyes bloodshot and in pain. "You should not have come. No matter how urgent. Go quickly, before I lose control."
His sleeves had been rolled up and the veins on his leanly muscled arms were sticking out.
"Santiago. You must control it. I have to speak with you. I have no time and so many lives are at risk," I said as my foot scooted back involuntarily.
"I cannot control it," he said in anguish.
"We all have a choice," I said. "Even you. Curse or no curse, we must decide how much to give in to our instincts, our heritage."
The snap of the metal utensil in his fist breaking in half shot through the room, startling me. The broken section of the thin knife he used to examine bodies skittered across the floor in the intervening silence.
"Quickly, then," he gasped, as if holding back his rage.
"Before, you mentioned you'd studied alchemy with the hrevanti. You were looking for a way to break your curse, weren't you?" I asked, receiving a tight nod in agreement from Santiago.
I continued as I felt the sands of our peaceful encounter running out. "There are many things you can do with alchemy—extend life, turn someone into another creature."
His white beard shook with the effort of holding back. He was chewing on his lower lip.
"What could you do with more powerful artifacts? Can you use things like the feather of the phoenix, or a true caul?" I asked, to the widening of Santiago's eyes. I was on the right track.
"I gave someone those two items and the Blade of Time," I said.
Santiago shook his head, indicating he hadn't heard of it, so I elaborated.
"A touch of the blade scrambles your time, sending each tiny piece of you to the infinite space of your timeline. To be cut by it is to die for all eternity," I said, and as the words left my lips, other connections began to take hold.
I paced back and forth, the words flying from my lips as Santiago shook with the effort of containing himself. I hated torturing him like this, but I had to know for sure.
"If you were connected to two other versions of yourself, from universes similar to ours, could you use those items to cut yourself off from them?" I asked.
Santiago's strangled voice came out. "If the blade can cut the connection, then the true caul provides protection from the worst of its effects."
"And the feather brings her back!"
He shook his head. "It's not strong enough on its own, otherwise every damned fool who could get one would have a feather. The recipe for resurrection is well-known, and includes the feather among other more mundane materials."
Santiago paused to catch his breath. It seemed speaking academically held back the rage. "But such a powerful potion needs a powerful catalyst and the only one that works is the bones of a nokke."
"Then she just needs one of those?" I asked.
A smile that resembled the rictus of one of his corpses strained his face. "You're in luck. The nokke are extinct."
A wave of dizziness passed through me. "Stones and stars. That's why the plague of monsters will be unleashed. That's not Matka trying to transform people. It's Neva. She thinks someone's ancestor was once a nokke. She's trying to create one so she can kill them for her potion."
"I don't understand," said Santiago, tugging on his white beard, making his face grotesquely elongated.
"It's too long to explain..."
The final connection clicked into place.
"Merde," I whispered, remembering my books of myth. "Another name for a nokke is a brook horse, isn't it?"
Santiago nodded.
"And I talked about brook horses with Zora while I was in her hut. No wonder she wanted to get rid of me so fast," I said, then ran down the hallway, yelling over my shoulder, "Thank you, Santiago!"
I hit the metal door hard, forgetting Brassy had locked me in. I heard the forced mewl of agony from the inner chamber and banged for Brassy to let me out.
It seemed to take forever for the lock to click open. I was rattling the handle the whole time. When I heard the heavy thud of the lock, I pushed my way out, slamming the door behind me. Brassy locked it again.
"What's wrong?" asked Brassy.
"I've made a terrible mistake," I said, remembering the ghostly umbilical cord that connected Morwen and Rowan, not to the hut, but to Neva. "I gave Neva everything she needs to kill Morwen and Rowan, the other versions of herself. That's why she offered to help. I'm a fool. I said it myself. She'd never do anything unless she had a strong motive. Matka even warned me not to give her the True Caul."
"What can we do?" asked Brassy.
I was about to tell Brassy that we were going to the Warmond's homestead together to stop Neva from killing Nell, when my hand touched the bird-skull around my neck. I didn't want anyone else to sacrifice themselves for me. Especially when I'd promised myself I’d protect the former bawdy girl.
"I need you to get back to the Water Works, and tell Ben what I just told you," I said. "Protecting the water supply doesn't matter anymore. Instead, tell him to get Voltaire and bring everything we've got to the Warmond's farm. He'll understand when you tell him that Neva's going to kill the brook horse."
"How will I get there?" she cried, her glass arm glinting against the gas lamps.
"I don't know," I said as I ran back to the steam carriage. "Find a way. I don't have time to take you. I have to get to Nell!"
As I made my way to the vehicle, Brassy went running off in a westerly direction. It was early enough and there were enough wagons and vehicles on the cobblestone streets that I knew she'd have no problem making it to the Water Works.
The Warmond farm was in a secluded valley in Germantown, which was about an hour away by steam carriage. It would be completely dark by the time I made it to the cabinetmaker's house, though the clear sky and bright moon crawling up the horizon would help.
On the two-wheeled path that led to the Warmond house, I encountered a pair of sturdy workhorses pulling a wagon overstuffed with boxes, sacks, crates with clothes sticking out the sides as if they'd been hastily thrown inside, and saws and other tools jammed in between. On the very top of the pile was a rug upon which two broad shouldered boys were perched. At the reins were Mr. and Mrs. Warmond, the former red faced and looking ready to bite through an iron bar, the latter, face wet with tears. The boys on top were holding axes and glancing into the forest in the direction of the creek.
I pulled into the grass and climbed out to speak with Mr. Warmond. He took one look at my attire, the dark pants and jacket, with pistol and rapier at the hips, and gave me an approving nod.
"Has something happened?" I asked. "Did you find Nell?"
"Nell's gone," he said, to the wails of his wife. "A demon in the creek killed her and her brother Bram. We found his body a few weeks ago."
"But why do you flee your home?" I asked.
He glanced at his wife with a mixture of pity and anger. "The demon tried to lure her into the water. It'd taken Nell's appearance. My poor wife was just going to walk right in. We never should have taken that girl into our home. Look what it's cost us!"
Mrs. Warmond wailed again, slapping and clawing her husband's arms while rocking on the seat.
"I want my Nell back," she cried. "I want her back. Why did you take her from me?"
The boys looked on in anguish while the husband swallowed his pain.
"Are you goin' back there?" asked Mr. Warmond.
"I am," I said with a grim nod.
He shook his head while he held his wife's arms. "You don't let that demon hurt anyone else now, do ya hear?"
The whole family waited for my response, as if I was preparing to swing the headsman's axe. "I'll do what is necessary."
Each member of the family seemed to take my words in a different way, so I took my leave and climbed into
the steam carriage.
Before long, I was marching down the hill as the silvery moonlight bathed the dead leaves of the forest in its ethereal glow. I did not bother hiding my approach; the crunch of leaves beneath my boots made stealth impossible. Instead, I strode with purpose.
The oxbow lake glittered, stirred by an unseen wind. Lilies moved across the surface, back and forth, in a restless pattern.
The crisp air was undercut with the smell of loam, like the primal blood of the earth. I was reminded that the brook horse was the most wild and dangerous of the water spirits.
"Nell," I said from the edge of the pond, careful to keep my gaze averted. "I've come to help. Someone's coming to kill you."
A surge trembled through the ground, like a stampede of horses passing. Something moved up the rapids of the creek, rushing across the water like a wave, except it was going in the wrong direction.
"You're in danger, Nell," I called out. "A witch is coming to kill you. To take your bones for a powerful spell."
Rushing water filled my ears. I stepped away from the edge, my boots sinking into the soft soil.
I caught another glimpse of movement, like the foamy edge of an ocean wave snaking across the water until it plunged into the oxbow lake, upsetting the lilies. The forest trembled, shaking the leaves like bones rattling. The few that clung to branches fell.
A dark shape rose from the water. The light of the moon failed to illuminate the girl.
"It doesn't matter anymore. You were right what you said last time. I'm a monster. I've killed my brother and I tried to kill my mother," said Nell from the middle of the pond. Her voice had grown stronger, more primal, yet it broke at the end.
"You're not a monster. You're just a confused young woman with powers she doesn't know how to control," I said, taking another step back.
The words left Nell's lips as a growl. "I can control my powers just fine."
I hesitated, keeping my gaze averted. "You can use them, but you don't know how to not use them. That's control. I know what you're going through."
"You can't," said Nell.
"I have powers of my own. Powers that were awoken in a similar fashion. I had to be trained how to use them, how to control them, or they will destroy me," I said. "I still fight those battles every night."
"You don't know what I feel," she said. "What I think about when I sit at the bottom. It frightens me. Excites me."
"I know this is difficult, that these powers came upon you unawares," I said.
"How can I be this monster?" she asked, hands slapping at the water.
"This is your heritage. Your ancestors were what you are today. A brook horse. A nokke," I explained.
Her voice rose in incredulous rage. "So I'm supposed to want to drown people? Feel the joy of their lungs filling with water?"
"No," I said, shaking my head so vehemently that my hair whipped my face. "You have a choice in how you can use it. Everyone always has a choice."
"But I'm a monster. That's my only choice," she said.
"When there were more of you," I said, thinking about what I knew of the hrevanti. "More nokke. Before they went extinct. They had their own lives and cultures. They did not live like you are today. They had art and homes. You are no more a monster than a human. Humans hurt each other and murder and make war upon each other. Are those not monstrous acts? I came from Russia, a place not as learned as the West. Russia still lurks in the darkness, with one foot cautiously in the light. It has not yet made that choice to embrace the Enlightenment. Embrace not where we come from, but who we could be. I do not know what you can do with your powers, but I'm certain you can find beautiful things. Things that bring you joy without hurting others. I left my homeland so I could be a better version of me. We are all primal creatures full of hate and jealousy and pain. We can all kill. Every last one of us. Powers or no powers. It is that we choose not to that matters."
I'd been speaking so passionately, I hadn't noticed that Nell had moved. She was no longer standing in the center of the oxbow lake. Using my peripheral vision, I tried to locate.
A voice reached me from the water's edge, as if she'd crept there like a crocodile. "You said my people are extinct. That I'm the only one left. So I have no family. No one to share this pain with."
"No. No," I said, holding my hands out. "That wasn't the point. It's a choice. Who we are is a choice. And you have a family. Events can be mended."
Nell spat into the water and rose to her hands and feet in the mud. "They're not my family and even if they were, I killed my brother and tried to kill my mother. You think they will ever forgive me for that?"
My gaze, kicking and screaming, was pulled onto her. I felt her power flood into my mind, silencing any resistance.
The girl that rose from the surface did not resemble the Nell I had met before. Even though she was still the same age as she was when I first met her a few scant months ago, she had transformed into a stunning young woman.
Her hair was the foam on the rapids, writhing around her naked body. Powerful coltish legs stood unwavering. I heard the sound of rushing water, of stampeding horses in my head.
In the depths of my mind, I was aware that I had thrown my weapons onto the shore and was willingly walking into the water. I raged against these events, but it was as if it were happening to someone else and I was watching from afar through a telescope.
I tried to access my magic, but the well was no longer there. It was buried beneath Nell's power.
The water was up to my waist. When it crested my breasts, I inhaled suddenly from the cold.
For a moment, I broke free.
"Nell, please—"
Then she clamped down her control and I was thrown back into the recesses of my mind. Nell pulled me into the depths. My mouth was closed, for now.
I was going to drown. There was nothing I could do. Nothing I could say, even if I could say it.
They're not my family...
It seemed important somehow. With my awareness reduced to a pinprick, I explored my memory.
The rusalka's magic did not work on their own family. Was it the same for the nokke?
They're not my family...
We shouldn't have taken her in...
The connection flared into my thoughts as I struggled to keep my lips closed.
Nell wanted me to open my lips and swallow the lake.
I had something to tell her.
I fought against her power.
At the bottom of the lake, she had every advantage.
But I could tap into that rage, that primal fear.
I pushed back, enough to grab a thread of sorcery. I knew she would overwhelm me in the end, but I only needed to reach the surface.
I sent a wave of magic towards Nell, breaking her hold. I kicked off the bottom of the lake and struggled towards the surface.
Nell grabbed my ankle, holding me.
I couldn't hold my air in anymore. I needed to breathe.
I felt my resistance failing.
Then I kicked again, using my sorcery to propel me upward through the water.
Nell was there moments after I surfaced. Before she could reclaim me, words tumbled from my lips. "Your real father is alive."
With my gaze averted, I treaded water as my boots and water-soaked clothes threatened to drag me down. The cold was brutal, turning my muscles hard. If Nell didn't kill me, I would drown eventually.
"How can you know this?" she asked.
"I had a vision while I was underwater," I lied. "I have the power of prophecy."
Which was true, but I couldn't quickly explain, so the lie was more convenient.
Suddenly, a delicate hand grabbed the back of my jacket and dragged me to the shore.
"Explain," she said, while I sat shivering in the mud. "Who is my father? What's his name?"
"Ben Franklin," I said. It was the story that Chloris told me about Estelle Carriager that helped me make the connection. Other connections formed as well. T
his plot of Neva's had been going on for quite some time.
"But he's dead," said Nell with fists at her side. "You're a liar."
"I'm not! I'm not!" I said, holding my hands out. "He's alive. I promise you."
"Then why did he abandon me?"
"He didn't," I said. "Your mother, Estelle, was trying to protect you from this witch that wants to kill you now. The witch has been searching for a nokke for a long time I think. And she learned someone in America had this heritage. Your mother got you away from her at cost to her life, while your father brought you to the Warmond family."
"Where is my father?" she asked, sounding like a little girl again.
I rubbed my arms, trying to warm them through the jacket. "He's coming here now. I sent a friend to fetch him. Along with the other gentleman you met before and some others. They're going to bring weapons, and together we will fight the witch and keep her from taking your bones."
Nell was kneeling in the mud, half in the water. "If this witch tries to take me, I'll just drown her."
The leather jacket was heavy and soaked, so I took it off, wishing the silvery moon was a sun to warm me. I hopped in place a few times.
"I'm sorry, Nell, but this witch is powerful. She's been around a long time. I don't think the pair of us can take her. We'll need everyone," I said as I stomped my feet.
On the far side of the oxbow lake, amid the barren maples and elms, massive claws crunched through the broken leaves and saplings. An ancient hut, with thick, yellow segmented chicken legs sticking out from the bottom, crouched on the edge of the forest.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The appearance of the hut did not surprise me. Events were like battles, each side making moves behind the fog of war, hoping to catch the other unaware. Neva had the high ground, the advantage of terrain, both figuratively and literally.
I'd been too slow in figuring out what was really going on. It'd been Neva behind the plague and Neva behind Franklin's troubles with Chloris back before I'd come to Philadelphia.
Neva hadn't lied to me about fulfilling her end of the bargain, but it was the same thing. If she killed Morwen and Rowan by cutting them off from the hut and her, they would no longer exist, leaving her promise as meaningless as a glass bullet. I would say the lesson was to never trust a being of myth, but that would give them too much credit. Humans were just as devious when it came to contests for power.
Nightfell Games (The Dashkova Memoirs Book 5) Page 21