Unnatural Issue

by Mercedes Lackey

  “Just hold on,” Peter begged them all, and deflected a shower of flints from Maya with a thin sheet of frozen fog. “Give her a little more time.”

  But time was precisely what they were rapidly running out of.

  The building was cavernous. A barn? A warehouse? It had an air of neglect about it, and was full of dust and the sickly smell of rotting flesh.

  There was a dim light in the very middle; “corpse-light” was the name that Susanne would have put to it, the phosphorescence of decay. Her father stood in the middle of this patch of sickly blue-green light, utterly still, utterly alone, eyes closed. Directing his terrible army, she suspected. Perhaps seeing through the dead eyes of his slaves.

  But as she ventured into the enormous room, her footfalls alerted him, and his eyes flew open. “Who’s there?” he demanded, his voice harsh, as if he had not used it much for weeks or even months.

  It sent chills down her back, and she wanted nothing more than to turn and run. This was insane. Even with the help of Robin’s Fae. But she put one foot in front of the other and slowly made her way toward him.

  “It’s me,” she croaked. “Susanne.” Your daughter, she had meant to add, but she couldn’t force herself to speak the words. “You have to stop this. You have to stop it now. It’s wrong! How can you, an Earth Master, possibly do something like this? Can’t you feel how the very Earth revolts against what you are doing?”

  She had to give Robin the chance to get his Fae into place. He needed time; they needed her distraction to come close, and they needed time to put on their illusions. It was just a good thing that this was a wooden building, so there was no iron frame to cause them pain, but there were still thousands of Cold Iron nails holding it together, weakening them.

  She felt him really looking at her for the first time. “So . . . you did inherit some of the magic.”

  She felt tears, unfeigned tears, running down her face as she approached him. What had he done to Charles? Doctor Maya was of the opinion now that he had something to do with Charles’ loss of memory. How many unwilling spirits had he bound back into their festering corpses? “You have to stop this. Please, this is wrong. You’re hurting people, good people. I can’t let you do that.”

  “And what do you intend to do about it, girl?” His voice was strange, harsh, as if he hadn’t actually used it in a very long time. “Fight me?” His lips curled back in a sneer. “Just because you know about magic, you aren’t a Huntsman, girl. You aren’t even trained—who was there to train you? You are no match for me!”

  “No!” she interrupted him desperately, as out of the corner of her eye she sensed movement. “No! I’m not going to let innocent people suffer when—I’m going to come back to you, Father.” Oh, how the words tasted like spoiled meat on her tongue. Yet she had no choice. She had to tell him what he wanted most to hear. “I’ll come with you now, I’ll do whatever you like! Just promise me that you’ll stop all this, that you’ll leave the Kerridges alone!”

  He stared at her, dumbfounded. He certainly had not expected to hear her say that. But he recovered quickly. Knowing how he thought, now, she was pretty sure she could guess what was running through his mind. I’m a simple-minded, simple girl, no more clever than the kitchen maids. I don’t know what he is, not really. I have a little magic, perhaps, but not enough to threaten him.

  She spoke quickly, playing into that. “I was afeared, Father,” she said, putting on her thickest accent. “I was afeared tha’d send me t’school, and all the girls there ’ould make mock of me.” She was so terrified now that it was no effort at all to let her eyes overflow with tears and her limbs tremble. “I never could be like them! The clothes tha’ got for me, they was like to strangle me . . . the lessons tha’ set me, they made my head spin! I jest wanted everything t’ be same again! So I run. And when tha’ sent tha’ monsters, I run again! Kerridges, they couldna see the back of me fast enough, an’ put me on boat. But I couldna stay, I hated it, it were all strange and foreignlike, I couldna understand anyone, the food wasna right, the soldiers sent me home an’ I was glad to go, an’ all I want is for everything to go back to how it was!”

  The last words ended in a sob. She buried her face in her hands, but she kept her fingers spread a little so she could see his face. His expression was changing, from anger, through surprise, to a smug satisfaction. She had done it. She had convinced him. And now—

  “My dear child,” he said, wheedlingly. “I thought the Kerridges had managed to turn you against me. That was why I attacked them! I thought they were keeping you, my own daughter, my own flesh and blood, from me! I’m not like them; I don’t have an army of servants. I tried to get you back using the only army I could—and what did it matter? The dead are dead and don’t care what happens to them anymore.”

  Hurry, Robin, hurry! she thought, as he edged forward, one hand crooked and twitching, ready to seize her the moment he got within reach. Crying into her hands, she backed up a step for every one that he took forward. She had to get him out of that circle—she knew it was there, it was invisible, but she could feel it. She had to get him out of his protections, or the Fae could do nothing.

  At any moment she expected him to realize what she was doing and stop moving. But he didn’t. He kept his eyes fixed on her, and his expression of avid glee made her blood run cold.

  And then he stepped over the circle. Then got three feet past it.

  “Richard!” The voice that came out of the darkness behind him made him start. And a woman dressed in the remains of what looked like a wedding dress appeared in midair, glowing faintly with her own light. Susanne knew who she was, of course, but it was still startling to see her own face reflected in those pale features.

  “Richard, what are you doing? How could you do this to our daughter, to my baby?” She had told Robin what she wanted them to say, and Richard Whitestone reacted exactly as she had thought he would.

  “I’m doing this for you, Rebecca!” he shouted, his face pale and his brow beading with sweat, eyes wide and wild. “I’m doing this for us! I’m going to bring you back, we can be together again! It will only take one little ritual and—”

  “Murderer!” the Fae shrilled in horror. “You would murder my child! How could you? Don’t lie, Richard, this is murder! You would slay her just as you slaughtered the servants, our servants, to fulfill your foul needs!”

  Susanne was suddenly struck dumb. This wasn’t anything she had told the Fae to say—

  But the guilty expression on Richard Whitestone’s face told her that it was nothing less than the truth. He had murdered the others, her friends, her protectors—the only real family she had ever had.

  Agatha. Old Mary. Nigel and Mathew. Prudence and Patience. People who had never done her, never done her father, anything but good. People who had comforted her, taught her, cared for her.

  Gone. All gone. She felt as if a bomb had dropped beside her, and she had lost a limb but hadn’t quite realized it yet.

  Another Fae appeared, this time from the side, wearing a yellow summer dress. “Don’t try to deny it! You never cared for me, for myself, you only loved the reflection of yourself in my eyes. I loved you, Richard, but I cannot love this monster you have become!”

  A third Fae appeared, on the left, this one in a winter cape. “You are reeking with the stench of death! You would house my soul in a rotting, walking corpse! You say you love me, but you would murder the child I loved, the child I gave up my life for, and force me into endless pain and living death! You are not even a beast, Richard Whitestone! You are worse than the evil things you used to hunt!”

  Now more and more Fae crowded around him, hissing, weeping, fiercely accusing him of all the horrors he had tried to hide. And Susanne stood there, locked in the paralysis of shock.

  All she wanted to do was collapse on the ground and scream, weep, howl for the deaths of her real family.

  With a supreme effort of will, she wrenched herself out of her shock. She c
ould not afford to mourn, not now—now she had to stop her father, as only she could.

  As the Fae encircled him, he backed up, step by step, eyes darting from one to another of them. She forced herself to move, forced herself to edge around him, to get to that circle he had built to protect himself. Armed with the knowledge that Peter had given her, she took a deep breath, forced herself to be calm and steady and then—

  Then it all sprang into focus. She could see the circle, but she also saw, clearly, just how he had built it. And he had been careless. Anyone of his bloodline could alter it.

  While he was occupied, she redrew the glyphs, repurposed the energies, and called on the living rock beneath the dirt floor of the warehouse to answer her. Just as he broke free of the Fae, shouting incoherently, she felt the rock respond to her.

  He dashed into his circle, running past her without really seeing her.

  And she closed the trap.

  He stopped, quite literally, in his tracks, his feet suddenly unable to move, held in place by the power of the earth itself. He tried to wrench them free and found he could not, and before he could see her, the Fae pounced, interposing themselves between him and Susanne, resuming their accusations and recriminations.

  Suddenly, he made a terrible sound, a cross between a wail and a scream, and collapsed into a fetal curl on the ground.

  Then, without warning, the Front came to England.

  All those months had honed her instincts, and when she heard the faint, familiar whistle above her, she instinctively flung herself to the side onto the floor and covered her head.

  And the world blew apart around her.

  The walking dead all, suddenly and without warning, froze in place.

  Susanne! Peter thought exultantly, but neither he nor the others stopped to congratulate themselves. At any moment, the liches might start to move again.

  Peter and Aldercroft stepped forward, side by side, their hands glowing—and in Alderscroft’s case, on fire—with the respective Elemental powers. Peter fixed his gaze on what appeared to be the leader of the trolls—a huge, ugly creature with greenish, warty skin, its primitive clothing encrusted with dirt and stains.

  “Flee,” he said, sternly. “Go now, and you will not be pur—

  There had been an odd sound approaching for some time; it sounded like an aeroplane, but it was moving very slowly. Some part of Peter was wondering just what an aeroplane was doing up at night, when he heard a far too familiar whistling sound.

  “Get down!” he shouted, flinging himself sideways and taking Maya and Peter Scott down with him.

  And the graveyard exploded around them.

  He’d never been that close to a bomb bursting before, and he never wanted to be again. There was a moment of blankness, then he came to himself and shook his head, hard. His ears were ringing. He looked around; the others were covered in bits of corpse and dirt and snow, but they seemed to be all right.

  He couldn’t hear, at least not well. He thought he heard Maya shouting something, but it was all muffled.

  Zeppelins. They must have been bombed by zeppelins. Nothing else had the range to get across the Channel. Alderscroft’s circle of fire, he realized. It might just as well have been a target.

  Five hundred yards away, there was the flash of another explosion—all his damaged ears heard was a muffled thud. But this one had hit something more substantial than a graveyard; it must have hit a building, because there were flames shooting up into the sky.

  Susanne couldn’t hear, and she felt muzzy-headed, but she knew she had to get out of there. That mutated into something a great deal more urgent when a burning beam fell between her and her father, who was still in his fetal curl on the floor. Robin and the Fae were nowhere to be seen—they must have vanished as soon as the bomb hit.

  Perhaps she might have tried to get to him and get him out as well before that chunk of flaming wood landed close enough to make the hem of her skirt smolder, but there was no way she could get to him now.

  Incendiaries. They’re dropping incendiaries. She’d seen the men, hideously burned by the hellish bombs and shells, but she had never seen one herself. She never wanted to again. Already the roof of the building was fully engulfed, and bits of flaming debris raining down on her. In another moment, she wouldn’t be able to get out herself.

  Fear galvanized her. She scrambled to her feet, hauled up her skirts, and sprinted for the door. She managed to wrench it open, even though the incredible heat had started to warp the frame, and paused for a quick glance back.

  Richard Whitestone was still curled on the floor. And as she darted out into the cold air and freedom and safety, the roof above him gave way and buried him beneath a pile of burning wood and shingles.

  She staggered out the door just in time to see the flash of another explosion, farther away. It couldn’t be aeroplanes—

  It must be zeppelins.

  She strained her eyes toward the sky; the clouds were incredibly low, but she thought she could make out three dark shapes, too regular to be cloud formations. There were three more explosions just beneath them, confirming her guess.

  Peter! Peter and the others! Thank goodness Peter and Garrick had been on the Front, and they knew what bombs sounded like—

  But she ran for the cemetery where she had left them, more fear flooding through her. Had they managed to hold off her father’s creatures? Had any of the bombs struck near them?

  She met them staggering out of the cemetery, Garrick and Peter supporting Lord Alderscroft between them.

  By now, the town was roused—and her hearing was coming back. She heard the bells and sirens of the fire brigade, heard people screaming, and heard the distant explosions of still more bombs, turning the night into horror for everyone in Gravesend.

  When Peter saw her, he dropped Alderscroft’s arm and ran toward her, catching her in a frantic embrace that she was in no mood to shake off. He took her face in both his hands after a moment. “Are you all right? Richard—”

  “Dead,” she said, and all her energy ran out. “A bomb dropped on the building we were in.” Her knees wobbled and threatened to give way. She kept herself standing by holding onto him.

  “Dear Lord.” He held her up.

  “Almsley, the best thing we can do right now is get away from here,” Lord Alderscroft rumbled as he pulled away from Garrick. “There is nothing we can do to help, and there are too many questions we cannot answer.”

  “The hotel is close,” Peter replied. “And my automobile is closer. You’re right. There is nothing we can do here.”

  The six of them staggered to where Peter had left the auto, and crammed into it, Susanne between Peter and Garrick in the front, the others in the back, as they had on the journey to the cemetery. Garrick took the wheel, and Peter did not object. Instead, he put his head against the doorpost, and closed his eyes.

  Garrick drove in silence for a while. The bombardment seemed to have stopped, but the night was alive with alarms and Black Marias and fire engines racing to the rescue. Finally, just as they pulled up to the hotel, Peter spoke.

  “You’re wrong, Old Lion,” he said, his eyes still closed. “That bomb is going to explain quite well why there is a carpet of cadaver parts strewn all over that part of the graveyard.”

  “So it is,” Alderscroft replied after a moment.

  When Susanne tried to get out of the auto, she nearly fell. Her legs, inexplicably, would not hold her up. Peter solved the problem by picking her up and carrying her in himself, and she was getting so muzzy-headed that she was not inclined to argue with him. She recognized the symptoms though—

  “Con-cussion,” she said thickly. “I’m con-cussed.”

  “Without a doubt,” he replied, and then they were in the door, into the light and warmth of the lobby, and the hotel staff fell upon them with cries of concern.

  Peter would not allow anyone to carry her but himself; he asked for the hotel physician, and brought her to her room, only le
aving her there and allowing others to take him off to be tended when a maid and the doctor were in the room.

  After that, things were blurred together in a vague dreamlike way. The maid undressed her and put her properly into bed, bathing her face and hands and combing bits of debris out of her hair. The doctor examined her and ordered monitoring and rest. They all left—and that was all she remembered until she woke, and her windows streamed with winter sunlight.

  Epilogue

  Susanne stood just outside Charles’ room and watched as his fiancé Rose comforted him. There was no doubt that her father had had something to do with his memory loss—perhaps trying to make him an easy victim that could not defend himself against a second attack. His memory came back to him all at once about the same time that Richard Whitestone had died.

  Including what must have been the horror of the attack. He had recognized some of the faces of the dead that had come at him—and had been forced to “kill” them a second time. He had been buried under a pile of bodies and body parts to the point where he’d had to be dug out. Small wonder he needed to be comforted.

  But not by her. He had barely greeted her—and had instead turned to Rose to weep unashamedly in her arms. To her credit, Rose had not lorded it over her defeated rival; she had been too concerned with Charles.

  The elder Kerridges had been civil to her and even thanked her, but it was clear that they wanted to see the last of her. They had already arranged for Charles’ transfer to a hospital Maya recommended in Yorkshire. It was very clear that his nerves were utterly shattered, and he would be a very long time recovering. Military doctors were not very sympathetic to men with these symptoms; the Kerridges were going to find someone who would be.

  There was nothing for her here.

  With a sigh, she turned away from the door and nearly ran into Peter.