I saw a sharp stone protruding from the embankment, and I ran my hand against it, dragging it down my palm. Blood dribbled down my wrist and the sharp, clear prick of pain pushed the whispers back. When all else failed, physical hurt would quiet the voices in my head. For now, anyway.
The Weird still pressed on my skull, and I pushed harder against the stone, focusing only on the pain.
On the road, the trees parted ahead of us and disgorged two tall, thin figures. They weren’t Fae—I could tell that much from their lack of silver eyes and pointed teeth—but they weren’t human, either. They moved too smoothly for that, like the fog all around us glided between the trees, and their forms were too slim and angular.
The Erlkin had found us. The people of the Mists, the other half of Dean’s bloodline, had found the intruders in their domain and were coming to exterminate us. At best. At worst, they were Erlkin working for Grey Draven, and we were about to be shackled and taken back to Lovecraft. I pressed my forehead down into the dirt. That couldn’t happen. It would be the end of even a faint hope that I could remain free and sane.
Dean squeezed my arm, each finger carving a groove that would leave purple marks behind. He was telling me to stay quiet. Stay still. Not to give us away.
I wasn’t the one, as it turned out, who screwed up—a splash came from the ditch on the other side of the path and I knew it could only be Cal.
“Oh, iron damn this day!” I hissed, breaking free of Dean’s grasp, trying to reach Cal before the Erlkin did … something. I’d use my Weird, keep them from taking us, keep us free of imprisonment for one more day. Honestly, I didn’t know what I was going to do. The new Aoife moved without thinking, summoning the scream of the Weird into the front of her mind.
Conrad erupted from his side of the ditch before I could fully leap from my hiding spot, entrapped my arms and took me to ground, my knees crashing into the gravel with sharp, hot blossoms of pain as he smothered me.
The Erlkin shouted at us in a guttural language I didn’t understand, but I knew when someone was yelling at me not to move. And Conrad was muttering to me as the ground shook with their approaching footsteps, a single word over and over.
“Stupid, stupid, stupid. So stupid, Aoife.”
“We know there are more of you skulking in there!” the Erlkin shouted in English. “Show your faces!”
“I’m going to let you up and we’re going to run, all right?” Conrad whispered into my hair. “Fast as you can. Just run. The others will be all right—the Erlkin don’t want them, just us.”
I struggled, trying to get out from under his weight. “Get off me, Conrad!” I hissed. “You’re not making this any better.”
“Show yourselves,” the Erlkin ordered. “Or we open fire into the bushes and drag your bodies back to the dirigible!”
“Wait!” Conrad shouted, raising his head. “We aren’t Fae spies. We’re just traveling through. There’s no need for all this, I promise you.”
I heard the lock and snap of a weapon, and my Weird pounded against my skull at the proximity of a complex machine, a machine it wanted to bend and twist to its will. My will. But that couldn’t happen. The Erlkin couldn’t know about my ability, so I held it back, until I thought I’d burst. I threw Conrad’s arms off me, feeling as if I’d suffocate if he touched me for another second.
“I’m Conrad Grayson,” Conrad announced. He stood above me now, hands out to the side, the long, clever fingers we shared splayed in deference to show his empty palms. “I’ve been here before, and I’ve always been a friend to the Erlkin, just like my father, Archibald Grayson. Maybe you’ve heard of him?”
To my right, Bethina and Cal climbed slowly from the ditch they’d thrown themselves into, Bethina clutching Cal’s arm. He was doing an all-right job of not losing his form, but it wasn’t good enough. I could see long teeth, and yellow eyes, and claws. I jerked my chin at him and he swallowed his ghoul face, features rippling until he was human again.
Now that we’d been caught, all I could think about was how we could convince the Erlkin we weren’t a threat. I wasn’t leaving Dean and Cal and Bethina, that much was certain. Conrad could run if he wanted to. I’d already left enough people behind.
“You,” the Erlkin said to Conrad. “Oh, we know all about you, Conrad Grayson.”
I took the chance to examine the Erlkin while he was focused on my brother and his big mouth. He was tall, thin, with hollow cheeks and stringy black hair pulled back with a leather thong at his neck. He looked like a human who’d been dead a few days, whose skin, tinged blue, had begun to tighten. In another life, when I’d been a student, some of us freshmen had been dared to go into the anatomy room in the School of Hospice. The cadaver on the table, dead of a ghoul attack, had looked much the same.
The thing he held in his hands was about the size of a crossbow but had a bulbous end, a glass ball that enclosed a coil of copper piping running back to a bulky gearbox near a trigger. Putting together what I’d learned at the Academy, I guessed it was a stun gun, with a windup static charge.
“You think you can hire slipstreamers to smuggle you back and forth across our borders any time you please?” the lead Erlkin snarled. “You think we don’t know every time your sack of meat walks through the Mists? We’re not stupid, human, nor are we savages. We see you. We know that someone breached the Gates, and we know that our borders aren’t safe. You’re not welcome here, by any true citizen of the Mists who’s not just out to take your money and leave you to die in a swamp.”
I looked up at Conrad in alarm. I’d thought the Erlkin who’d helped us escape Graystone, our father’s house, had been, at the very least, not criminals. Honestly, I’d hoped they’d been in some kind of authority, that Conrad had used his charm to sway the Erlkin to his cause, but I saw now that I was wrong. Slipstreamers, Dean had said, were Erlkin who used the Gates on the sly, for illicit purposes, caring nothing for what might happen if they misused the Gates or allowed something unwanted to come through along with them. It was horribly dangerous—slipstreamers didn’t really know what they were doing, and often as not, their charges disappeared into a void.
In short, I thought we’d been invited to the Mists. But knowing Conrad as I did, I should have guessed he’d done something underhanded. I could have strangled him in that moment, and I doubted Dean or Cal or Bethina would have stopped me, judging from the looks on their faces.
“Listen,” Conrad said, making a smoothing motion in the air between the Erlkin and himself. “I’m sure we can work this out.”
“You’re a wanted man,” the Erlkin snarled. “And the rest of you are trespassers. Every time you cross from the Iron Land or anywhere else to the Mists, you raise the chance of the Fae finding a way in and crossing over with you. This may be an in-between place, but it’s our place. And we don’t want you. Breaching borders without permission of the Erlkin is a grave offense.” He moved his leather-clad finger to the trigger of his weapon. “For the danger you’ve caused our lands, I could put you down right here, by law.”
Conrad took another step forward. I wanted to yell at him not to be an idiot, but I couldn’t make myself talk. I wanted to grab him like he’d grabbed me, foolish and frantic, and run, but the trees rustled behind us and two more Erlkin with similar weapons stepped onto the road. Who knew how many more might be in the trees? I stayed still, my heart pounding, hating myself for hesitating.
“We can work this out,” Conrad said again. “I have money.”
“We’re soldiers—we work for the people of Windhaven. We don’t want your money.” The Erlkin nodded to the weapon in his hands. “This is a shock rifle. Might not kill you, but it’ll knock you out. Now stay put before I prove it to you.”
“I say we shoot him here,” said the other. “Lowlife consorting with slipstreamers, and probably a human criminal himself. We don’t need that kind in our land.”
Both Erlkin raised their rifles. I opened my mouth to shout. Conrad might have bee
n a complete idiot for using criminals to get him into the Mists and escape the Proctors, but he was my brother, and if I had to throw myself into the line of fire, I would.
Before I could do more than stumble to my feet, Dean’s shape appeared between us and the Erlkin. “Don’t shoot.”
The Erlkin looked at Dean, then each other. The pair behind us shifted uncomfortably, but at a gesture from the leader, they lowered their rifles.
“Is it …?” said the one who’d wanted to vaporize Conrad.
“I think it is,” said the leader. He cocked an eyebrow at Dean. “You’ve grown a foot or two, Nails, but I’d know that smug face anywhere.”
I cut a glance at Dean. I knew that he was half Erlkin, but I’d had no idea he was known to the Erlkin at large. I stayed quiet, waiting for him to say something and praying that it wouldn’t be one of the smartass comments that usually came out of his mouth.
Dean bristled, his shoulders going up the way they did when he got insulted. “That’s not my name. It hasn’t been for years, and you of all people, Skip, should know that.”
“That’s his name?” Cal said, surprised. “Skip? Kinda lighthearted.”
“Cal,” I said, trying not to move my lips or my body in any way that could be interpreted as threatening. “Shut up.”
“I forget what you’re running under these days,” Skip said. “Dave or Dale or something, right? While you pretend you’re flesh-and-blood human?”
“It’s Dean,” Dean gritted out. “And I’m a hell of a lot more human than you.”
For a breathless second, I thought Skip was going to shoot Dean, and then move on to Conrad and the rest of us. His cadaverous brow furrowed, and his body language tightened so much I was surprised he didn’t break. Then he dropped his rifle and laughed.
Dean laughed too, but he didn’t drop his shoulders. Neither did Skip, although he pasted a great big smile on his face, one that looked about as out of place as I’d have looked at a formal tea party.
“Hell, man,” Skip said. “How long has it been?”
“Ten years, at least,” Dean said. “We were both still playing with toys, for sure.”
“Yeah, except it looks like you never stopped playing around,” Skip said, gesturing at us. “What on the scorched earth is going on here? You still running humans around in circles and calling yourself an underground guide?”
Dean’s shoulders tightened another notch. “Why are you asking, Skip? You keeping tabs on me?”
“Not me.” Skip shrugged. “But someone up there is keeping an eye on you, boyo, a close and watchful eye, at that.”
Dean didn’t stop smiling, but he dropped back to stand next to me. The implicit meaning wasn’t lost on me: he was with us, even though he shared Erlkin blood, just like Conrad and I shared the Fae’s. None of us was one thing or the other. We were caught in the middle, just like we were caught between the four Erlkin with their rifles.
“We’re not here to make trouble,” Dean told Skip. “We’re just passing through.”
Skip shook his head. “Don’t even try to sell that one to me, Nails. Dean. Whatever. You know we’ve got to take you up. That one’s a wanted criminal, and the others, well.” He sighed. “We know what’s happening in the Iron Land.”
“I really doubt that,” Dean muttered, but he nodded to Conrad and the rest of us. “Fine. Take us up to the city on Windhaven. Can’t say I missed that flying junkyard at all, so let’s get this over with.”
Skip gestured at Conrad. “We’re going to arrest him and put the cuffs on.”
Conrad bristled. “The hell you are.”
“Conrad,” I snapped at him, jabbing him on the arm. “You’ve done enough to aggravate these gentlemen, don’t you think?”
He looked at me like I’d slapped him with my hand rather than my tongue. I felt a pang in return. I used to be a good girl, a nice girl, who never so much as raised her voice. Who would never have scolded her brother for only doing what he thought he had to.
Well, she was gone, along with the life she’d lived. Conrad had led us back into the Mists as a wanted criminal, and he’d gotten us into this mess. I loved my brother, but he could be a prize idiot.
Skip gestured to his fellow soldier, who pulled out a pair of old-fashioned skeleton-key shackles. I flinched when I saw the gleam of polished, oiled iron. I just hoped Conrad would be out of them before the madness started to creep in. The last time he’d had a fit, back in Lovecraft, he’d attacked me and tried to slash my throat. I tried not to think about it, the feel of the knife against my skin, the curious warmth of blood loss, but the memories crept in and I flinched as the Erlkin snapped the cuffs shut around my brother’s wrists.
Skip gestured to the group, and we fell into a loose line, bracketed by the four Erlkin.
Dean grabbed my arm and leaned close enough that his lips were against my ear. “When he asks—and he will—you and I met somewhere that didn’t involve guiding, you’re here because your brother got you mixed up in a scheme, and for the love of all that’s iron, don’t mention the Fae stuff unless you want your head hung out as a warning to anyone else who’d wander into the Mists. Got it?”
“Got it,” I murmured, keeping my eye on the back of Skip’s head. Dean had made it evident there was no love lost between Fae and Erlkin, but I had the sinking impression that I’d gotten into a swamp much deeper and more dangerous than I could have conceived. I wasn’t as good a liar as Dean or Conrad, and I couldn’t lie inside my own mind at all—I was scared of what we’d find when we reached this Windhaven, whatever it was.
“Knew you’d catch on, princess,” Dean muttered, and brushed a kiss against the top of my ear before he let go of me.
I put aside the way his touch made my thoughts jiggle out of alignment. It wasn’t the time for crushes and weak knees, even if I wanted nothing more than to have everything be right again, and my biggest concern to be what to wear on a date with Dean, a real one with no Proctors and no specter of their lie. I raised my voice instead and spoke to Skip.
“Where are we going?”
“Windhaven,” he said. “And to get to Windhaven, we’re going to fly.”
The Dance of the Air
WE WALKED PERHAPS half a mile, to a clearing down a gravel path off the main road. Skip and his friends kept in tight formation around us. I found it a bit ludicrous—they had no idea who the real threat was. Conrad, presumably, had a Weird like I did, some kind of elemental magic that allowed the Graysons to conjure wind and flame and everything in between. But he had never shown it to me, and I hadn’t brought it up.
It’d be much better if Skip kept thinking of Conrad as criminal but basically harmless, just a stupid human overstepping his bounds. This goal in mind, I walked with my head down, the same ache in my feet that had been there all day twinging in my worn-out boots.
“There’s going to be a weight issue,” said Skip’s short friend. “The dirigible wasn’t built for nine. Or more like ten, including the portly dame.”
“Excuse you!” Bethina snapped. “I’m not an ounce overweight!”
“You’re too heavy for the sky,” Skip said bluntly. “That’s just simple math.”
“Better than being a walking cadaver, like some of us,” I piped up. Skip looked at me, then at Dean.
“Keep a gag on your girlfriend, Deano, unless you want me to do it for you.”
Dean looked at me and, no doubt seeing the murder in my eyes, brushed his hand against mine. “Not the time,” he muttered.
I took a deep breath and then leaned a bit closer to him, so that the sides of our hands stayed in contact as we walked. Dean caught my eye again and gave me a sideways smile.
“You three can walk back to the pickup zone,” Skip told the other Erlkin. “I’ll stay with the prisoner.”
“That’s fifteen miles!” his friend protested.
“You don’t like it, go live in the woods with the slipstreamers,” Skip snapped. “You have your orders.”
The cage looked delicate, the wire thin and woven intricately, and Skip opened the retractable door with a crank handle. “Get in,” he ordered, shoving Conrad. My brother fell to the floor of the cage, and Skip kicked him hard in the gut.
“Hey!” I shouted, lunging for Skip. Dean grabbed me by the sweater and yanked me back.
“No, Aoife,” he hissed through gritted teeth. I struggled against him for a moment before going still. I’d always had a temper, and it was coming out more and more now that I didn’t have the admonition to be a “proper young lady” hanging over me, as I’d had at the Academy. I gave Skip the worst look I could muster, but I smoothed my hands over my skirt and stood down.
“I’m fine,” I told Dean. “He’s not worth it.”
“You’re a firecracker,” Skip sneered. “Time was, Dean knew just what to do with a girl like you.”
I crouched next to Conrad, cradling his head in my lap as Skip got Cal and Bethina on board and reeled in his mooring lines. “Bastard,” I said to him, stroking my brother’s hair. Seeing Conrad hurt brought back the old feelings, the feelings of the girl who’d do anything for her strong, loyal brother. Conrad coughed weakly.
“I’m fine, Aoife,” he said. “We’ll get this fixed. Just a misunderstanding.”
Once we’d all boarded, the craft rose from the forest floor with a bump. I looked at the ground drifting away below my feet and tried to focus on the construction of the Erlkin’s craft to still my temper and the fear that once we reached Windhaven, we’d be in even worse trouble. The cage was made of fine silver mesh and iron bones that echoed in the wind, giving an empty bong when I tapped my knuckle against it. Hollow bones, like a bird’s, light and strong. The Erlkin were better engineers than the Fae, that was for sure. The Fae feared anything with moving parts, treated it like it was some object from beyond reason if it mimicked their magic in any way.
The Nightmare Garden Page 3