Night of the Highland Dragon

by Isabel Cooper

  “No, it’s always a pleasure,” Gillian said, though her voice said that the words came from politeness and not true feeling. Judith wished she had only come on a social call and had the luxury of taking the hint.

  “Let me help you with those, at least,” she said, reaching out a hand for the milk pails. The brisk combination of speech and action had served her well as a soldier and did the same now. She had a pail in each hand before Gillian could think to object. “Your beasts are still giving well, I see. A good sign for the winter. But you should have an extra hand, so close to term.”

  “Och,” Gillian said with a faint and effortful smile and a pat to her stomach, “I’m an old hand at this by now, m’lady. Besides, Ronald’s taken wee Ronnie out with him—and that’s half my troubles put to rest—and Mam’s watching the little one. A bit of milking’s restful in its way.”

  “Glad you feel so,” said Judith. “Cows have never been overly fond of me. But I’d think you might find the house a bit crowded these days too. Or perhaps you’ve more patience with your brother than I have with mine.”

  At that, Gillian flinched. “Oh,” she said quickly and too lightly, “Ross is out so often, he’s never a bother. Not to say he’s not attentive.”

  “No, of course not,” Judith said and glanced toward the house. “But I’d imagine he wants to catch up a bit, after being gone so long. Is he in now?”

  “No,” said Gillian, and the tension in her body wound tighter. “He went on a walk a wee bit ago, and he’s not been back since. He—”

  Judith slowed her steps, pretending to take extra care with the milk pails. “Hmm?”

  “He and Mam had words.”

  “Your mother’s always been one for speaking her mind,” said Judith, letting herself smile a little. “And it’s hard to come home again once you’re grown. My father and I had some rows that practically shook the foundations.”

  “Oh, there’s that, but—” Gillian looked off into the distance, chewed on her lower lip briefly, and then shrugged. “I don’t know. It might only be as you say, m’lady. It’s just… Ross is so high-strung these days. And it’s not that he misses London, I think, for he hardly ever speaks well of it—says it’s a dirty place, full of horrible people.”

  “Worse than I’ve heard of it,” said Judith, “but it’s no place I’d live myself. Some of us just aren’t made for life around crowds. Perhaps he’s thinking of coming back.”

  “It could be,” said Gillian, who apparently took no pleasure in the thought of it. She shook her head. “But I shouldn’t be telling your ladyship my troubles, nor keeping you out here in the cold when you’ve come all this way. Let me manage the door for you, at least.”

  With a milk pail in each hand, Judith assented easily, if not gladly. Nothing could have made her glad to enter the Gordons’ cottage on such an errand.

  * * *

  “What about Mr. Hamilton?” William asked.

  “He didn’t mention anything,” McKendry said. The smoke from his cigar curled upward into the air of the parlor, a fragrant cloud whose swirls looked almost like oracular patterns. “But you can have a word with him on the subject yourself—just now, at that.”

  The door was opening as he spoke, and Hamilton stepped in. He didn’t look like a man who’d been up all night robbing graves. His eyes were bright and unshadowed, his smile was easy, and he walked with no visible sign of sore muscles. Comparative youth might have done as much, though—that and callousness.

  “Good morning, Mr. Arundell. You wanted to ask me something?”

  “Whether you’d seen or heard anything last night, around nine or so.”

  “It’s to do with the matter in the churchyard,” said McKendry, sighing. “Ghastly business, aye?”

  “Aye,” said Hamilton. “And I’d be glad to tell you anything I knew about it, only there isn’t anything, as I wasn’t here. I’d gone down to the pub for a pint or two at half past eight, and I stayed until past eleven. It wasn’t a vast throng, but three or four men there could say I’m telling the truth.”

  His smile never flickered as he talked. If anything, it deepened.

  McKendry, on the other hand, looked back and forth between Hamilton and William, and bristled once he realized what was happening, half rising from his chair. “Now see here—”

  “It’s all right, George,” said Hamilton, making settling motions with one hand. “Hazard of the profession, and has been ever since Burke and Hare made a name for themselves. But that was well in the past, Mr. Arundell,” he added. “It’s been more than half a century since the dissection rooms have run short. Even the oldest of my professors couldn’t call those days well to mind.”

  “Oh no,” said McKendry, managing a genial little chuckle now that he didn’t have to take umbrage on his friend’s behalf. “The Anatomy Act was in…thirty-three? Thirty-two? Before I was even born, lad, and that’s saying a good bit. And it may have its critics, but there’s nobody with a need to go digging up graveyards. Besides, Hamilton’s not been a student for years.”

  “Ah,” said William, and he offered a sheepish smile. “Dreadfully sorry. Out of my area of expertise, I’m afraid.”

  “And why wouldn’t it be?” Hamilton took a cigar from his friend’s case, struck a match on the bottom of his boot, and leaned back, all learned man of the world. “I was in school when the Ripper was working, and didn’t we get a lot of funny looks when one of us was about after dark? Ach, we’ve come a good long way from Galen and Hunter”—William only dimly recognized the first name as an ancient Greek surgeon and didn’t know the second at all—“but a man who works with a knife is always bound to get as much fear as glory.”

  That last word poked like a pin into his mind. He’d read it in the endless notes he’d gone through at the central office—a spell from one French grimoire or other, newly come to light now that the Frenchies were inclined to be cooperative. Glorious Hand, Hand of Glory…it had been along those lines.

  One took a criminal’s hand and pickled it, making it into a candle or a candleholder. Then what?

  “Yes,” he said, so suddenly that both of his hosts started. “Pardon me.” William got to his feet. “How does one reach the Gordons’?”

  “Down the road westward,” said McKendry. He was frowning, puzzled, but the directions came off his tongue almost automatically. “Left at the fork. It’ll be the last house, set back near the woods.”

  “Thank you. I’m afraid I must be going. Sorry to have disturbed you.”

  “Don’t give it another thought,” said Hamilton. “Best of luck.”

  “Are you quite well?” McKendry asked, peering up at him.

  “I hope to be better soon. Thank you.”

  William left McKendry’s yard still not remembering what the Hand of Glory did. He knew that it was nothing good, though—and if Hamilton’s alibi held, which he was sure it would, then Ross was quite probably making one.

  And Judith was going to his house.

  He reached the road and started to run.

  * * *

  “He’s gotten himself into trouble, I’m sure of it,” said Mrs. MacDougal. Her face was hollow-cheeked, her lips so thin as to be nearly nonexistent. Age looked like worry, and worry like age, and in her countenance they’d merged. “He’d not tell me what sort. Said it was all for our sake—as if we’d ever asked it of him. As though his sister or I hadna’ done well enough for ourselves.”

  “It’s no crime to want better for your family, Mum,” said Gillian mildly, after a concerned look at Judith. “And we’d not said no to any of the money he sent us, nor any of the fine things he brought back.”

  “Why do you think he’s in trouble?” Judith asked, letting Gillian and her mother worry over morality. “Gillian said he was high-strung—”

  “Jumpy as a colt, more like,” said Mrs. MacDougal. “He coul
dna’ hear a noise, the last few days, without flinching. ’Tis the letters that did it. He’s had three of them since he came, all from London. Devil a one would he let me read, and each of them put him in a worse temper than the last. Debts, I shouldn’t wonder. Or worse.”

  “Could be, I’m afraid,” Judith said and meant it. Using magic to get money had never struck her as worth the time, but she’d never lacked for funds. A man with a little occult knowledge and a legion of creditors breathing down his neck might well try to turn lead to gold—and a man who knew of a wealthy and mysterious family might well try to discover the source of that wealth and see whether he could siphon off a bit. “I hate to ask, but do you know where he was last night?”

  “No,” said Mrs. MacDougal. “He went out after dinner, and he wasna’ back when I fell asleep.”

  “We’d gone to bed too,” said Gillian. “It’s not as if we had to stay up to let him in—the door hardly locks. I didn’t think much of it.” She looked at Judith and her expression was her mother’s in every particular. “He’s in trouble here, if he isn’t in London. Isn’t that so, your ladyship?”

  The door opened.

  Judith started to turn and see who’d entered. Halfway through the motion, her neck froze in place, leaving her staring at the corner of the cottage. Every muscle in her body went rigid. She wasn’t sure how she still lived, for the air was frozen in her lungs, but she had no sense of suffocation, only of complete and total paralysis.

  At first she thought one of the other women would notice and raise an alarm, but at the sides of her vision, she saw that neither of them was moving. Flickering light danced across all three of their stiff forms—light from a source that Judith at first couldn’t see.

  It moved closer, in time with a man’s steady footsteps. Ross MacDougal stepped into Judith’s vision, tense and sorrowful as he looked back and forth between the three women in the room. In one hand was…another hand, this one long dead. Each of its desiccated fingers sprouted a wick, and a flame danced at all five: fingers of fire on fingers of flesh.

  In his other hand, he held a long knife.

  Thirty-two

  The time for secrecy was over.

  Anyone on the road, or on the farms to either side of it, could see William running. He didn’t care. He registered a few people as he passed them, knew that they might have tried to speak, but didn’t pause to respond or even to acknowledge them. Later, they’d understand. Or they wouldn’t. The question had no weight to it.

  As he ran, he silently cursed—cursed the rough ground underfoot, all rocks and loose dirt; cursed his body for the basic humanity that meant he couldn’t move with the speed he wished; and cursed his mind for its failures of memory and connection. It had taken him too long to think of the Hand of Glory. He still wasn’t sure he’d remembered all of the details right.

  A candle made of, or resting in, a criminal’s pickled hand: that was the basic gist. It should take a while to make…but it might not, for a man who’d already enlisted demons to his cause. That kind of power might let its adherents take shortcuts.

  Make the candle. Light the candle.

  There was the fork McKendry had mentioned. William veered left, almost ran into a man with a horse and cart, saw that it wasn’t Ross—the bastard—and kept going with a breathless, muttered apology.

  Light the candle. He wished the man had been Ross. He would have been off his guard, then, harmless and away from Judith. Damn him. Judith could probably take care of herself. But there were ways of killing even dragons. Hadn’t William bluffed her with just that?

  What did you do with the damned thing once you got it lit? It was a thief’s trick. The grimoire had mentioned burglars. Doors wouldn’t stay locked. He thought that was part of it. How many bloody farms were on this path? Why had he thought Loch Arach small? The place was vast. The road went on forever.

  Unlocking doors wasn’t dangerous. There had been more. A picture appeared in his head, one from a real nursery tale, though not one that featured dragons: a golden-haired girl lying on a bed, roses growing all around her. Sleeping Beauty. Sleep. Or stillness. Helplessness, either way. There’d been a verse in his notes, a possible correspondence from a folktale: Be as the dead for the dead man’s sake, one of the lines had gone.

  Sympathetic magic. Fairly simple. The dead were without motion or volition. A dead man’s hand conferred the same qualities. Basic theory. Even he knew it.

  Be as the dead.

  Running should have been painful by then. Breathing should have been painful by then. William knew the depth of his fear by the fact that he could have kept going for hours. A house was coming up in the distance, small and set back, as McKendry had said, near the woods.

  He drew his gun. He chose the one with silver bullets this time, though Ross was probably still human. William was taking no chances.

  Be as the dead.

  Four syllables. An easy rhythm for his feet to echo. Like a heartbeat, really. And did the heart keep moving when the rest of the body couldn’t? Did the lungs? Was it only helplessness that the Hand brought to its victims, or the slow horror of suffocation? Was Judith—

  There was the door. William stopped. He made himself stand still—be as the dead—and listen. He heard a voice from the other side: Ross. Nobody else was talking.

  Careful now, said the voice of his reason.

  None of his notes had told him the Hand’s limits. It might be like Medusa and turn any onlooker to stone. Rushing in unprepared was never a good idea when there was time to do otherwise, and if Ross was talking, there was still time.

  There was also a window.

  * * *

  “I’m sorry, Mother. Gillian,” Ross said. “And you too, Lady MacAlasdair. I hadn’t intended any violence. No more than I could help,” he added and swallowed.

  Judith thought he was remembering the young man in Belholm, the one William had mentioned to her. She hoped so. She wanted the memory to rise up and reproach Ross, as she lacked the power to do. In that much he looked like he was gratifying her. He swallowed again, hard, and for a second she thought he might be ill.

  She strained to move any part of her body, throwing her whole will toward motion, and nothing happened. In final desperation, Judith reached into herself and began the process of transformation—and nothing happened.

  Her body was no longer her own.

  Inside her head, she screamed for what felt like an age.

  Ross was speaking again. “I heard you talking. From outside, I heard you. And I knew she’d not let the matter rest.” He wasn’t even looking at Judith now. “And I knew neither of you would defend me. Even though I’ve always had your interests at heart. And I—”

  I panicked.

  Ross didn’t say that, but he might as well have. His eyes were wild, the whites and pupils both wide, with only a sliver of brown showing between. Sweat stood out on his forehead, despite the day’s chill, and he kept licking his lips as he talked, his tongue darting out to the corners of his mouth at just about every third word. If he hadn’t been holding the hand and the knife, Judith thought he’d have been wiping his palms on his trousers.

  Dry mouth. Wet hands. Down through the centuries, she’d gotten to know the look of fear well, and the way it felt on the skin and in the throat. If she’d actually been breathing, she was sure she could have smelled it, acrid and metallic.

  If Ross had let Judith go away, he might have had time to run. Before he went, he might even have had time to convince his mother or his sister, or both, that he was innocent, or at least justified.

  Jumpy as a colt.

  He had jumped, and come down running in the first direction he saw. Now he was reconsidering. Now he was thinking it was too late to reconsider. Ross was in very much over his head, and he knew it.

  That made him more dangerous. You could reason with a calm man. Yo
u could play on his sympathy, talk him down, maybe buy him off if it came to that. Terrified men, like terrified stock, would kill at the sound of a stick breaking.

  “I know I never explained myself. And I’d say that means some of the blame’s mine—though if you’d only trusted me, as is proper… But you’ve been on your own up here a great deal, aye, and it’s far from a natural place and never has been. I can’t blame either of you. I’m so very sorry that things have come to such a pass.”

  Ross searched his mother’s motionless face, then his sister’s, hunting for a sign of understanding or forgiveness that he must have known wouldn’t appear—couldn’t, even if either of them had felt as he wanted. To Judith’s eyes, he moved strangely, half a second too early or too late. When she thought about it, there’d been the same quality about his voice and the sound of his footsteps.

  What any of that meant, she couldn’t say. She suspected she might not have very much time to wonder.

  G’bye, Stephen, Colin. Live well, and remember me to your bairns.

  “The thing is,” Ross said, because he was going to make her wait to die, like the black-hearted dog that he was, “it’s not only the money, although there’s certainly that, and I’d have supported you in grand style. It’s about preserving the world as it should be. About preserving the nation as it should be. I’m doing a fine deed, truly, though I allow that it might not look that way. There’s only one other man who has the courage to join me in it now, but once the others find out—we’ll be heroes. To them and to everyone.”

  What?

  Briefly, Judith was too puzzled to feel either fear or sorrow. She didn’t have much choice about staring at Ross, but she would have even if she’d been able to move. Was he a would-be Saint George—or the mortals’ version of that legend—who’d somehow gotten word of her family’s secret? Or a modern version of the witch finders who’d held such dominion in her father’s day?

  He would have a time trying to hang her or burn her at the stake. A knife to the throat or the heart, on the other hand, would probably suffice. Those of her bloodline healed quickly and endured much, but vital organs were, well, vital, regardless of form, and it would be easy enough to hit the right spot when she couldn’t move.