Two days and a night had passed since she had found Other Tom’s body floating, emptied out. The drunks were anxious and skittish, pacing and cursing as they drank, and scurrying off to their various lairs long before sunset. Under the bridge, Martin Jack brooded. The traces of the smell choked him, left him shaking and nauseated when he had tried to pursue it over ground. So much for his flock. It was up to Jenny to find the hunter. Find it and stop it, whatever it was.
The university lay at the heart of the city, its buildings crowded close together in a knot of twisting streets. Once, it had stood on a small island in the midst of the marsh, rising a scant five or six feet above the rest. It had been a monastery in those days, a close-packed hive of men in rough robes who fished for eels in the waters, muttering grim prayers to keep Jenny away. A demon, they had called her, a hell-spawn sent to lure them into sin and death. She had felt no remorse when the distant king of men sent his soldiers to drive them away, and had set up the university in their place. Students were easier prey by far, easy to lure with lights and smiles and hints of mystery. Jenny had fed well in those days, while the university outgrew its original boundaries and spread into her margins. Her fingers reached into its cellars and the lower corridors, and few were those who tried to bind her with holy signs or iron bars.
Now, she followed the faint trail, squeezing through pipes and conduits, eavesdropping at drains. It was hard to track, through the layers and layers of stone, but inch by narrow inch she pulled herself after it, around the park and past the fine houses, under the shopping center and, at last, into the basements of the university. Here, men fought off the dark and the dank with harsh neon and so-called water-resistant paints. But the buildings were old, built before the days of damp-proofing. As Jenny passed under the foundation, it called to her. Tendrils of damp wound their way up through the old walls, settled into the frames of windows, behind cupboards and wood panels, under the worn linoleum that covered the floors. She stretched out, relief shivering through her, and set herself to listen hard.
The humans were everywhere, huddled in groups about benches and tables, poring over screens and slabs, glass jars and books, gossiping and chattering and ranting at one another. Their feet drummed on floor after floor, rattled up stairwells. Their breath filled the building in hot clouds. Her fingers yearned toward them, hungry to taste their busy, petty lives. In a small side room, a plump young man bent alone over a tank, adjusting fine paddles that made waves in the water it held. It would be so easy to creep up on him and pull his head down to her embrace. She could feel the beat of his heart, trembling in the fine veins just below his skin. Her right hand began to slide slowly through the pipe that linked the tank to the main.
With an effort, she pulled herself back to the task in hand. She could come back for the young man later, now she knew the way. But first … first she had to find the one who dared to hunt her territory.
Martin Jack’s wrong smell was stronger here. She followed it up through a line of damp that climbed its way up the inside of a stairwell, traced it through the warm living roots of the ivy that blanketed the outside of the building, sealing her waters inside. She peered through the rotting wood of window-frames, slid about drainpipes, found herself at the last snug between the ill-fitting panes of a dormer window. The room beyond was tiny, little more than a cupboard, and made smaller by the mass of machinery that crowded it. It reeked of hot metal and wire, ozone and sweat, and old, dried blood. The smell and the burn that had lingered about Other Tom’s body. Jenny shuddered. This was it, this was where her rival laired. This was his den, his sanctuary. She shook herself and oozed out through a crack in the frame. Droplets of water pocked the floor as she pulled herself together.
The place was a shambles. Objects covered every surface: papers, wires, empty mugs and cartons, small heavy boxes that hummed or flashed or beeped. A metal trolley under the window held a jumble of blades and bowls: underneath it a bin was filled with blood-stained dressings. She sniffed, started back, choking. Blood, yes, blood that conjured for her the shapes of Other Tom and the first victim. The blood of another, also, young and strong and not quite right. A syringe lay beside a small vial. When she reached out for it, heat swirled from it. Not cold iron, nor yet a thing blessed by some human holy man, and yet it held something of the quality of both. Whatever that vial held, someone had imbued it with a vital faith. She pulled her hand back. The whole room was wrong, filled with a hunger that she did not understand.
Notes were everywhere, scribbled onto the piles of paper, scrawled across the walls in thick black lines. Jenny had absorbed human script long ago, from the early days of votive tablets to the sodden pages of old newspapers thrown into the canal. But these words made no sense. … initial results suggests payments to test subjects would be better made after the conclusion of the experiment, to cut down on interference by alcohol… . Effects of drunkenness may be transferable: more data desirable… . Preliminary research indicates disturbed vision may be due to poor positioning of the chips as subject seems not to be suffering such effects despite alcohol intake… . Excessive bleeding on insertion still proving a problem in some cases. Subjects’ memories cloudy. Cleaner and healthier subjects might be preferable to further research, but as yet can see no way to avoid inconvenient questions. Materials still unstable: unsafe to test on students… . Query: should seek further training on insertion work? Jenny shook her head. None of it made any sense to her. What kind of creature hunted with words and needles and strange uncanny faith? It was nothing of her world, of that she was certain. And if it was human, it was of a kind she had never known before. She had grown insular since the concrete walls had pinned her waters back into the bed of the canal. She needed to know more about how humans had changed.
She needed to talk to Martin Jack.
“They’re trying to explain the world.” Martin Jack sprawled on the edge of the towpath, the remains of a fish supper that he had dragged out of some litter bin spread out on the gravel beside him. “They want to know how everything works.”
Head and shoulders out of the canal, Jenny propped her elbows on the top of the cement surround and let herself float. She said, “That’s what the monks did and the priests with their churches.”
“Yes… .” Martin Jack sounded unsure. “This is different. They call it science. They make things, measure things. It’s called experimentation. I hear about it from students, sometimes. The girls talk to me when I walk them home.”
Jenny shook her head. He did not change. For all his fearsome reputation as a harbinger of doom, the black shuck still felt the need from time to time to accompany lone women through the streets until they reached their homes, trotting beside them like the meekest pet dog and wagging his tail in delight at the attention. She had suggested once that he lead them to her instead. She could use the nourishment. He hadn’t spoken to her for seven years. She had never understood his affection for humans. It served no purpose.
Now, however, was no time to twit him about it. She needed what he had learnt from his regular contacts with humans. He said, “There are all sorts of different kinds of experiment. Sometimes they explode.”
“This isn’t about explosions. This is about memory and needles and blood.”
“Ah. That’s called psychology.” Martin Jack’s jaw dropped in a grin. “The porter at the big gray round building told me about it. He said they study how people go mad till they go mad themselves.”
The hunter might well be mad, if Jenny was any judge of human insanity. The bodies of the two victims still lay in her mud: she could feel them like a sore that she could not quite reach. She said, “We have to stop it.”
He nodded. She went on, “You could go to the room, scare them like you used to. Curse them to die soon.”
“They have to believe.” His ears drooped. “These days they just chase me out with a broom or throw things at me.”
Jenny belonged to the water. That was where her strength lay. Away fro
m the core of it, the canal, she was weak. But Martin Jack didn’t do human-shaped. He was a dog, pure and simple. She shifted, sending ripples rocking into the far bank. She didn’t like where her thoughts were taking her. She said, “One of your people, the drunks …”
“No.” There was a growl to that.
“We need bait. I can’t do anything to the hunter unless he comes here. And he comes here with bodies.”
Martin Jack snapped his teeth at her and despite herself she pushed back from the canal’s edge. The shuck’s eyes glowed wild and red. She said, “Someone has to go …”
“You go.” He rose to his full height, heavy head hanging down toward her. Backlit by the moon, his shadow stretched out over the canal, long and sinister. Jenny shivered.
The drunks were not her problem. They were flotsam, nothing more. She tolerated them in the hope, one day, of a good meal.
It was not for humans to hunt on her territory or deprive her of her prey. She sighed. “All right. I’ll go.”
“Would you like tea?” The hunter cleared a heap of papers off a chair and offered it to Jenny. “I can fetch some from the tearoom. There are biscuits, too.” She smiled as she took a stool beside one of her flashing machines. “They should be pretty fresh.”
Jenny did not want to take anything from her, however it was offered. Her earlier offerings had been more than enough. The taint of them was still within her, would remain until they rotted away to bone. This room reeked of that wrongness and of the tang of human fanaticism. She sat down, straight-spined and said, “No. I don’t want those.”
She had pictured the hunter as a man, someone broad and muscular and marked by the chase, like the villagers who had lived in her marsh long centuries before, who had fought and killed one another in their wars over cattle and fresh water and cast their enemies into her embrace. She had expected a warrior, an adversary out of human legend. Instead … The hunter was an angular young woman with lank brown hair and a pinched face. The bones of her wrists stood out below the grubby cuffs of her white coat. From time to time, she rubbed at an angry-looking mark on the side of her neck. Her shoulders hunched: even on the tall stool, she did not seem menacing.
Now, leaning forward, she said, “You know what my research is about, yes? You saw my notice in the free paper?”
Jenny had no idea about that. But she nodded anyway. The hunter went on, “I’m exploring the nature of emotional response at a very basic level. I’m listening intently to your feelings, if you like.” She rubbed again at the cut on her neck. “It’s really very simple and very, very safe. I’ll insert a micro-chip into you, near to a major nerve clump. It’s linked to one I have myself—you see, it’s really safe, I’ve been chipped for months. And then I’ll be able to feel what you feel. Do you see?”
It was more human talk, like the chants and mumblings of the monks. Her words thrummed through Jenny with the same disquieting rhythm as church bells. The room was full of it. Her fingers quivered, yearned toward the safe damp space within the walls. The hunter was still talking, chattering on about vital knowledge and medical breakthroughs. Jenny rubbed at her own throat, feeling the fine skin begin to heat and tingle. The hunter’s voice droned on, “… of course, there is a payment, but the contribution you’ll be making to science by itself is something—”
Jenny interrupted her. “Just do it.”
“What?” The hunter stared, her eyes too big in her thin face.
“I don’t care about that.” It was hard to talk, the stench of belief in the room was so strong. “Just do whatever it is.”
“You have to sign the waiver.”
“Yes.” Jenny swallowed. “Whatever you say.”
“Are you taking something?” The hunter’s brows drew down. “Drugs can interfere with my results. I thought I made that clear in my advert.”
“No drugs.” Jenny licked her dry lips. “It’s too hot. I don’t like that.”
The frown remained, but the hunter slid from her stool and opened a crowded drawer. She thrust a sheaf of papers into Jenny’s hands. “You need to sign this at the bottom, and then on the next page.” She fished a pen from a pocket and handed it over. “Here.” Jenny made a mark where she was told, imitating the smears that the water made of newsprint. The hunter took the papers back without looking at them and dropped them onto one of her piles. She crossed to the metal trolley. “It’s a really simple process. You won’t feel a thing.” She turned, a wedge of cotton in her hand. “I’ll just clean up the site and then I’ll inject you.” Something cold dabbed at Jenny’s neck, just to one side of her spinal column. She fought not to flinch at the closeness of the hunter. Next, surely, would come the blood and then …
Something darted into her neck, thin and bitter and burning hot. She tasted hunger and excitement and a violent sense of righteousness. Her eyes blurred: for an instant she was two Jennys, the one on the chair and another, an awkward earthy self filled with need and ambition. Images flashed by, men smirking as they passed, laughing behind their hands.
And then there was only the darkness.
The car engine woke Martin Jack, coughing to a halt scant feet from where he slept under a bench. He opened his eyes. It was maybe two hours before dawn: the orange street lamps still burned, but the windows of the houses were dark and silent. A door opened and closed with a slam, wafting that thick sense of wrongness towards him. He whimpered, pressed himself hard into the comfort of the ground beneath him. Wrong and wrong. Almost twelve hours since Jenny had gone on her mission and now this. He could smell the canal, thin and empty without the familiar green scent of her. His street people had come late and left early, huddling together over a bottle of ginger wine and half a pack of cheap cigarettes. He had wanted to follow them back into the center of the city and sleep curled against warm flesh.
He had promised Jenny. He had promised to help. But Jenny had gone away and not come back and the waters held no trace of her. The footsteps grew louder. They were heavy and uneven, counterpointed by a thick low drag and the catch of ragged breathing. He pulled back into the darkest part of the shadows. Along the towpath came a scant figure, bent over and laboring, with something lumpy wallowing in its wake. The wrongness billowed out from it in rich waves. Martin Jack gagged, felt his body tremble. Too much belief, grown sour through frustration and need. He pulled his ears down and peered out. There was only him, now, to defend what was left.
The figure came to a halt by the side of the canal, seven or eight feet away. Martin Jack fought back a whine that wanted to surge from his throat. The figure straightened, wriggling its shoulders and rubbing at its back, then bent again to pull at the lump at its feet. A waft of dampness rose, damping down the wrongness for a moment. Damp and green and familiar.
Jenny?
Slowly, unwillingly, Martin Jack began to creep forward toward the two shapes. The figure—it was a human woman—tugged and prodded at Jenny, who lay limp and crumpled on the towpath. Martin Jack froze. Jenny was strong and cunning. Nothing had ever caught her, not the ancient warriors, not the monks, not the men who drained the marsh. Jenny was the waters; she had been here before all those others and she would be here long after they had turned to ash.
Huffing and straining, the woman pushed Jenny’s limp form forward over the gravel. Toward the concrete lip of the canal. Toward the waters … The whimper forced its way out, loud in the still night. The woman turned, something glittering in her hand. Released suddenly, Jenny’s body slumped back and one of her arms flopped over the edge into the water. Ripples jounced and scurried. Out in the center, the water began to churn.
Martin Jack growled low in his throat and jumped.
Water rushed through Jenny, ran cold through her veins, beneath her skin, surging and grumbling, driving the heat back and back. Her body hung heavy, flaccid, unresponsive to her commands. Her spine ached: at the base her skull something burned, blinding her with pain. She coughed and felt the water fill her lungs. Her arms thrashed out and
the water welcomed her, pulling her down and down. Its long chill fingers pried her apart, flushed out the fear, tightened on the flame in her throat. Her body bent and she toppled sideways. The water—her water—caught her and held on, tight and close and homely. It wrapped her, gripped her as it dug deep under her flesh to tug away the taint the hunter had left under her skin. She cried out, and the waters echoed her. She uncurled and found herself home.
Her waters were angry. She wound herself through them and let that fill her to her limit. In the midst of them—in the midst of her—something thrashed and flailed and flapped. She swam up slowly to investigate. A mouthful of dog hair, stale and chewy: she spat that out and swam on. A long pale limb, thin and bony, wrapped in dirty cotton. The rush and thunder of a heart beating too fast in panic and alarm. The tang of fear and the sweet, sweet flow of living memory. In the heart of her waters, Jenny smiled as she wrapped herself about the hunter and drew her down and down and down.
She was very hungry.
THE ROOTS OF ASTON QUERCUS
Juliet E. McKenna
“Mora is late with her leaves again.” Gamella stood with her arms folded tight across her bosom.
The Modern Fae's Guide to Surviving Humanity Page 6